‘Bringing Animals in’ to Sustainability: an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable human-animal relations
By Siobhan Speiran
“Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test, consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect humankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.”
― Milan Kundera
Table of Contents
Introduction
Origins of Sustainable Approaches to Animals
Unearthing Animal Agency with Geography
Wild Animals in Sustainable Tourism
Animal Welfare’s influence on Sustainability
Enfranchising the Individual Animal
Typology of Human-Animal Relations
Conclusion
Works Cited
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Introduction
Animals tell us about ourselves. The way we interact with them on a daily basis, and those which whom we choose to interact, in varying ways, speaks not only to our own personal ethics, but to the larger moral paradigms we exist in. Why do we malign some animals with language such as ‘pest’ or ‘invasive’ while others we esteem as members of our families or ambassadors[1]of their species? Why do we extend moral consideration to those who look like us, act like us, and think like us, while those who appear alien, without emotion or intelligence, are denied moral standing? Consider the rabbit: to some a pest, others a pet or a source of food; we can carry diverse relations with even a singular species.
To have these species hierarchies in this common era, when we still know remarkably little about animal cognition, emotion, and experiences seems archaic. Frequently discoveries are made attributing higher-order processing and sentience to species once-thought unable to feel pain or think (Chang, et al., 2015; Huntingford et al., 2006; Richter et al. 2016). The legacy of speciesism, tracing back to the Great Chain of Being and Cartesian binaries of man/nature and civilized/savage uncannily tracks the discrimination of marginalized human groups based on gender, race, and ability (Fennell, 2012, 2014; Hovorka, 2015; Yudina & Fennell, 2013; Yudina & Grimwood, 2016). The issue of the ‘animal’,or rather how we relate to them, is an intersectional one, indicated by the many diverse fields of scholarship which focus on this subject.[2]To interrogate human-animal relations necessarily requires a holistic approach, since focusing on only one part of the equation (animal or human) would be remiss, as our lives are inexorably entangled.
A useful concept for teasing apart the complexities ofhuman-animal relationsis sustainability. The two are theoretically similar; both require interdisciplinary and contextual considerations, and are laden with ethical and moral conundrums that speak to larger social and historical processes. In this paper, I advance the idea of a ‘sustainable’ human-animal relation; one which is mutually beneficial with positive gains for both parties and promotes the dissolution of entrenched boundaries between human/animal. I will consider how such a win-winrelation[3]can be examined through the lenses of conservation science, animal welfare, and animal studies—grounding my argument with examples from the scholarship on wildlife tourism.
Origins of Sustainable Approaches to AnimalsSustainability, conservation biology, and animal welfare sciences have all been described in turn as ‘mandated’ disciplines. They are mission-driven, value-laden, and even crisis-oriented as they deal with the phenomena of human-environment relations, which can be both mutualistic and thorny (Gibson, 2006; Fraser, 2010; Meine, Soulé, & Noss, 2006; Soulé, 1985). The study of human-animal relations, more specifically, occurs in these scholarly realms and will be expounded on in this section, which aims to emphasize their interconnectedness as they relate to sustainability.
The ecosystemconcept was introduced during the biological sciences’ 20thcentury revolution– integrating knowledge of the entire biotic and abiotic living system, genetics, population biology, and evolution–to understand trophic levels and ecological niches (Soulé, 1985). In 1939, Aldo Leopold posited that all biota should be valued as a whole, instead of individual species rated on their instrumental use to humans. Thus, the study of conservation shifted towards a more holistic objective of assessing and maintaining “a state of health in the land” (ibid: 634). In 1970, the journal Biological Conservationwas first published in which David Ehrenfeld wrote that the discipline was forged “in that turbulent and vital area where biology meets the social sciences and humanities” (Soulé, 1985: 636). Soulé’s seminal 1985 paper “What is conservation biology?” attended to this call for interdisciplinarity and a plurality of worldviews to address biodiversity conservation. At this time, there was increasing awareness not only of species extinction, but also the impact of globalization and development in emerging economies such as the Global South, where environments were typically more biodiverse but conversely sensitive to resource extraction.
The concept of sustainabilityhas likewise evolved over time from one which focused on resource-management, an anthropocentric position, towards an increasingly ecocentric paradigm which holistically considers the ecological, economic, social, and intra-generational impacts of humans on the natural world (Fraser, 2010). Nested under this topic, sustainable developmentwas defined in the 1987 “Brundtland” commission as the ability to meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987: 8). The pursuit of sustainability, which seeks to ensure the long-term persistence of diverse human and non-human communities (i.e. animals), was in part born of these intersections between alleviating poverty in the developing world and wildlife conservation.
Robert Gibson’s influential paper on sustainability assessments serves as a basis for considering ‘sustainable’ human-animal relations (2006). He writes that sustainability addresses two large, intertwining issues: the yawning chasm between the world’s rich and poor, and the degradation of the natural environment– ergo “socio-economic” and “biophysical matters,” respectively (ibid: 172). Amongst the sustainability scholarship, the chief way in which animals have been included are as the latter– i.e. part of natural resource management and ecosystem services (Despledge & Galloway, 2005; Robinson & Bennett, 2000), of agriculture systems (Broom 2010; Twine, 2010), and of tourism (Gibson, 2006). Interestingly, in Gibson’s paper the word “animal” is never mentioned, and “species” is only mentioned once. This reveals a common theme throughout the sustainability literature: the presence of animal lives is often shadow-y, and their circumstances usually lumped under larger conceptual headings such as “biophysical matters” and “socio-ecological integrity.”
Gibson’s criteria for a sustainable system in language and concept most closely relates to the work of conservation science. He writes that the aim of sustainability is to produce “multiple reinforcing gains,” and that trade-offs are “a last resort,” since we should “encourage positive steps towards greater community and ecological sustainability” (ibid: 172). When a trade-off occurs it is often between human interests and biodiversity conservation, but they canlead to more sustainable outcomes (McShane et al., 2011). These decisions should be decided between multiple perspectives and levels of stakeholdership and are context-dependent on the culture in which it is implemented (ibid).[4]
In discussions of stakeholdership, however, one wonders: ‘where are the animals?’ How are their individual experiences accounted for in such deliberations? If sustainability concerns both ecological and social contexts, then to achieve a ‘sustainable human-animal relation’ would require a paradigm shift. This may be achieved through a different, socio-ecological approach to conservation[5], integrating animal welfare and animal agency into sustainability frameworks.
The social sciences are not an “optional,” but rather a “vital” component for conservation decision-making and management (Bennett, et al., 2017a: 104), especially for their capacity to analyze research using deductive and inductive reasoning. Social scientists should be included in the initial planning stages onwards through all stages of research (Campbell, 2005). Integrating research on human and ecological dimensions into conservation practice may prove useful in addressing the “intractable problems” of conservation conflicts. These originate from “a deeper cognitive level […] linked to power relations, changing attitudes, and values that are rooted in social and cultural history” (Redpath et al., 2013: 100). Furthermore, it can generate hybrid solutions which shift current interrogative priorities from “what is the price of nature?” to “what kind of nature do we want?” (Büscher et al., 2012: 25).
A significant debate exists, however, within conservation between “nature protectionists” and “social conservationists” (McShane et al., 2011). While some scholars espousing the latter position see the benefit of limited-extractive use at conservation sites and community-based conservation (Campbell, 2007; Gavin et al., 2015), many protected areas often employ the former position, also called ‘fortress conservation’ (Duffy, 2017). This is an approach to natural resource management which implements physical boundaries to define protected areas and the animals within them (Evans & Adams, 2016). This method has been criticized for “actualising the nature-society divide” (ibid: 216), and Duffy writes that the “militarisation” of conservation through the employment of armed conservation enforcement and surveillance such as rangers “breathes new life” into fortress conservation (2017). Indeed, boundaries in conservation are “often an outcome of a complex, contested negotiation between different actors” and seek to both conceptually and physically separate the human from the non-human (Evans and Adams, 2016: 216).
Conversely, Soulé penned a criticism on this ‘new conservation’ (i.e. ‘social conservation’), which seeks to achieve conservation goals by alleviating global poverty and espousing sustainable resource use (Soulé, 2013). He suggests that implementing social conservation principles in practice would be to the detriment of protecting keystone and endangered species and natural reserves—since social conservation’s interest in protecting nature emerges from its material usefulness to humans, not its intrinsic value, and is therefore an anthropocentric episteme. Soulé’s critique thereby acknowledges animal circumstances, if only at a species-level. This debate within the discipline has important implications of whether human or non-human interests are prioritized when considering sustainability in a conservation context.
Unearthing Animal Agency with Geography
How can animal agencies be accounted for in sustainability?[6]Animal agency refers to an animal’s ability to influence relational networks and the environment (Hovorka, 2018b).[7]Animal geographers may develop “lively” biogeographies incorporating the natural and social sciences, which may also be referred to as the merging of ethology and ethnology (Lestel, Brunois, & Gaunet, 2006;Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010). Barua explores this issue by examining the cohabitation of humans and elephants through fieldwork in India, developing a “dwelt political ecology” (Barua, 2014). He asks how postcolonial history can be recorded in a way which “does not render inert” animal agencies and writes that some more-than-human geographers address this conundrum by “rematerializing” and “reanimating” landscapes as “dwelt achievements” between people and animals (ibid: 916).
Barua relates the severing of nature from society to the containment of elephants in fenced-off forest reserves, while locals exist outside of that construction (2014). Elephants trespass the human-imposed boundaries and enter the domain of the local population time and time again. By tracking the elephants’ movement, a “vital and relational topography” is generated as the elephant herd engage in “spacemaking” through human-elephant encounters (ibid: 922-3). In this context, elephants are not a marginalized group[8], and contribute to increased poverty amongst local populations (i.e., crop-raiding, etc.). This biogeography is “written by human and elephant bodies” (p.923) and highlights intragroup differences amongst elephants as possessing individual ethologies and “lifeworlds” (p.929). If one were to apply a sustainability framework to human-elephant relations in this example, it would be crucial to consider how the elephants’ lifeworlds influence the socio-ecological integrity. Elephants should be given stakeholdership, since as ‘spacemakers’ they actively influence the sustainability of the surrounding human community.
Despite the effort to protect wildlife, the territorialized “people-free” fortress approach has been criticized for reproducing colonial legacies of land dispossession (Evans and Adams, 2016; Gavin et al., 2015) both for local people living in to-be-protected areas, and for wild animals whose sovereignty is “appropriated” by “human encroachment” (Evans and Adams, 2016 citing Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011). As a result of these protected areas where enforced physical boundaries define the lives and range of the wildlife they contain, human-wildlife conflictcan result as in the previous example (Redpath et al., 2013).[9]
As a strategy for re-conceptualizing conflict mitigation, some scholars have even put forth the idea of evolving the term human-wildlife conflicttowards a more accurate descriptive: human-human conflict over wildlife. The reasoning behind this shift is that “human-wildlife conflict” assumes wildlife “are conscious human antagonists.” Separating conflicts where humans are directly interacting with wildlife, from those between human groups in debate over wildlife issues, is an important distinction since they will be conceptualized and addressed differently (Redpath et al., 2013: 100). This is especially true given how people’s ingrained attitudes, perceived vulnerability, and retaliatory responses towards ‘problem’ species can alter over time based on social influences (Dickman, 2010:459). Therefore, increased scholarship on quantifying the perceived and actual costs of wildlife conflict would be useful, combined with more social research into people’s perceptions of wildlife-caused damage, the cultural status of the ‘problem’ animal, and their retaliatory strategies (ibid). Social science scholarship has made headway exploring the human dimension of conservation conflicts (Campbell, 2007; Evans & Adams, 2016; Fraser-Celin, Hovorka, & Silver, 2018, p.; Mayberry, Hovorka, & Evans, 2017; Pooley, 2016).
Whereas more “preservationist” paradigms may inhibit solutions to conflict over wildlife, community-based conservation and sustainable use has proven successful in certain contexts despite placing an economic value on animals(Campbell, 2007). With a political ecology approach, Campbell examined a Costa Rican sea turtle conservation initiative managed by a community with limited-extractive access for commercial and consumptive use of sea turtle eggs (ibid). The author writes: “By allowing people to use wildlife resources, sustainable use attempts to ensure that wildlife conservation can compete with other habitat uses” (ibid: 318). Nevertheless, visiting tourists tended to view the regulated egg harvest negatively as endangering sea turtle conservation. Meanwhile, the socio-ecological arguments made in the harvest’s favour suggest that ending the harvest could lead to less nesting, loss of local livelihoods, and an increase in illegal egg harvesting.
Wild Animals in Sustainable Tourism
Animals are a major component of the global tourism industry, with estimates of nearly a million individuals featured in attractions worldwide (Moorhouse et al., 2015). Currently, most wildlife tourism is not sustainable because it exists within an anthropocentric, capitalist paradigm (i.e., lack of regulation, ‘greenwashing’, endangerment of animal lives, etc.) (Duffy, 2014; Moorhouse et al., 2017; WAP, 2018). Known also as market environmentalism,this paradigm commodifies animals in tourism and fuels their role as resources for entertainment and fiscal gain (Belicia & Islam, 2018).
Recently there has been a critical turn in sustainable tourism research towards a focus on tourist attitudes: the social constructions of tourism, different world views and political insights, and the production of unequal power relations (Bramwell & Lane, 2014; Carder et al., 2018; Honey, 2008).For example, Mossaz, et al. conclude that conservation tourism is effective for ‘big cats’ when it integrates ecological, social, legal, and market factors, and suggest future conservation studies involve local communities and social research (2015). The sustainability of the industry “depends on integrating visitor demands with resource management,” “an understanding of tourist motivation” (Bach & Burton, 2017: 181), and of the overall tourist experience (Carder et al., 2018).Ecofeminists argue, however, that truly ‘sustainable’ tourism attraction (ergo, ‘ecotourism’) prioritizes the welfare and conservation of wild animals, and de-prioritizes the tourist experience of the encounter (Bulbeck, 2005).[10]Moorhouse et al. (2017) echo this stance, arguing that a “subjective norm” for the ethical use of wildlife in tourism should be promoted so tourists can limit any adverse impacts on involved species.[11]
The concept of sustainable tourismgrew from the notion of sustainable development, and its use is a value-laden and much-debated topic which can be viewed from an economic, ecological, long-term viability, and sustainable development perspective (Butler, 1999). The success of the term lies in its indefinable nature, and “thus has become all things to all interested parties” (ibid: 11). Sustainable tourism is not necessarily the same as tourism developed along sustainable development principles, since the former is often (erroneously) treated as a single-sector and the latter is multi-sectoral and holistic in nature (ibid). Conceptions of sustainable tourism have tended to focus on the sustainability of the tourism operation and location itself, as opposed to the environmental or social contexts. Applying the tenants of sustainable tourism requires clear, measurable indicators which account for a nexus of human, economic, and environmental factors (ibid).
The number of eco-tourists is growing three times faster than conventional tourists (Das & Chatterjee, 2015). While some scholars extoll the positive impacts of ecotourism, others are hesitant to deem it a panacea(ibid). Some maintain that ecotourism is a Western construct and neoliberalizes nature (animals included) in a way that packages it for tourist consumption and perpetuates inequalities at the local level of host communities (Cater, 2006; Cohen, 2008; Cohen & Cohen, 2015; Duffy, 2014; 2015; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2006; Horton, 2009).
The experiences of animal lives, on an individual welfare basis, seem to only be recently garnering attention in the tourism literature (Carder, et al., 2016; D’Cruze et al., 2017; Moorhouse, et al., 2015). D’Cruze et al. suggest more research is needed on wildlife ecotourism, since their case study found it to be ineffectively regulated which endangered the welfare of wild animal individuals, thereby their species-level conservation and the ultimate sustainability of the attraction and the ecosystem itself (2017). This ‘snowball effect’ has important implications for sustainability and requires more holistic research to understand.
While there are examples of ecotourism’s negative impact on wildlife conservation (Moorhouse et al. 2015; Mbaiwa 2018), animal welfare (Moorhouse et al. 2015; D’Cruze et al. 2017), and the conservation and development of local communities (Horton 2009), other studies are in support of its transformative potential. Buckley et al. determined about 84% of funding for national parks agencies globally are derived from ecotourism (2012).[12]The authors note that while scientists’ concern for the expanding tourism industry has historically focused on disturbance to wildlife as a result of development, the conservation of threatened mammal species is dependent on tourism revenue to a previously unanticipated degree (ibid). Revenue from ecotourism supports different processes of wild animal governance including translocation, breeding and anti-poaching programs.[13]
Currently, ecotourism appears to be an imperfect, but better-than-the-alternative[14]solution for achieving sustainability. An irresponsibility managed operation may endanger sustainability of the wild population through removal of individuals, triggering a change in feeding and reproductive behaviour, causing stress or physiological illnesses, or increasing susceptibility to poaching (Ménard et al., 2014). Certification schemes and guiding criteria, such as on TripAdvisor, are necessary to clarify the legal status of wildlife tourism attractions. More research is also needed on the permissibility of food provisioning to facilitate wildlife encounters, and how to shift demand for a ‘touch’ encounter between tourists and animals to a ‘no touch one (Belicia & Islam, 2018[15]; D’Cruze et al., 2017; Moorhouse et al., 2017; Orams, 2000[16]).
World Animal Protection’s 2018 report on wildlife tourism recounted a survey of sixty-two travel trade associations, of which just twenty-one had a webpage on sustainable tourism, only three had animal welfare guidelines within their stated “sustainability programs”, and only one monitored the welfare guidelines’ implementations (WAP, 2018). They maintain that “sustaining demand [for wildlife entertainment] perpetuates a never-ending cycle of cruelty” (WAP, 2018:11). As well, travel trade associations have “a critical role” in reducing this demand by deeming “unacceptable” those attractions which seriously endanger welfare as a necessary step towards “recogni[zing] best practices” and a more “wildlife-friendly future” (i.e. ban ‘tiger selfies,’ ‘elephant riding’, etc. (Cohen, 2013; Kontogeorgopoulos, 2009)) (WAP, 2018: 11).
It is likely there will always be a trade-off between conservation, welfare, visitor satisfaction, and revenue generation– but a well-managed ecotourism operation with a confluence of positive animal welfare states, positive conservation impacts, and tangible benefits to the local community could have transformative power and be truly sustainable.
Animal Welfare’s influence on Sustainability
Welfare accounts for the experiences of individual animals, and as Broom writes, “a system that results in poor welfare is unsustainable” (2010). Historically welfare was thought to be an impediment to conservation and natural resource management, considered “conceptually distinct” and to “remain politically separate” (Soulé, 1985:731). The emergence of sub-fields such as ‘compassionate conservation’ and studies of welfare at the group level attempt to address this gap (Draper & Bekoff, 2013; Ohl & Putman, 2014; Paquet & Darimont, 2010; Ramp & Bekoff, 2015). Despite being a necessary component of any human-animal relation, the experiences of individual animals are not always considered in the sustainability scholarship– something von Essen and Allen might call “the failure to acknowledge and formalize animal presence in participation […] [and the] failure to understandtheir subjective goods” (2017).
Another barrier to integrating welfare with conservation and sustainability studies is that most welfare scholarship is within the agricultural, research, and domestic animal sector. Even then, discussions of sustainability appear uncommon; few papers consider sustainable animal health, breeding, and reproduction (Gamborg & Sandøe, 2005). Within the agricultural industry there is a need to define sustainability in clearer and more practical terms, since prioritizing discussions of sustainability “obliges decision-makers” towards a “unified perspective” (ibid). In their paper on the sustainability of farm animal breeding, Gamborg and Sandøe note that not only does the concept of sustainability “depend heavily on the values and priorities” of those who define it, but that “there is no single, correct account of the requirements of sustainability” (ibid: 229). They posit rather that sustainability should be considered as a “conceptual ‘umbrella’ under which different visions and beliefs, more or less closely connected, shelter” (ibid).
Some argue there has yet to be an applied ethical foundation for conservation which incorporates animal welfare (Paquet & Darimont, 2010), and that the utilitarian conservation practice in which individual animals are sacrificed for the good of the population (i.e., ‘the ends justify the means’), could be considered “environmental fascism” (ibid: 22). Thus, affording conservation and welfare equal priority seems like an intractable problem; how can we weigh bothindividuals andpopulations as intrinsically valuable? Paquet and Darimont ask, "Is it even possible to design economically-viable societies that protect the welfare of animals and are ecologically sustainable?” (ibid: 23).
While conservation activities influence the survival, biological fitness, and welfare of wild animals, likewise activities which impact welfare can influence the achievement of conservation goals, and therefore the socio-ecological integrity of a system (Beausoleil et al., 2018; Broom, 2011; Dawkins, 1998; Kirkwood & Sainsbury, 1996).A review of all terrestrial vertebrate reintroduction studies since 1990 found that little research has been done to gather empirical data or even discuss the ethical dilemmas surrounding the welfare impacts of wild animal reintroductions, and that conservation practitioners have been slow to incorporate welfare concerns in this area (Harrington et al., 2013). Most studies claimed reintroduction was successful, but seldom mentioned costs to the project in terms of animal stress and body condition. This is a significant considering most studies reported one or more negative impacts on individuals (i.e., predation, dispersal, disease, human conflict, etc.), but rarely mentioned welfare or ethics explicitly (ibid). The authors conclude that improving implementation, monitoring, and reporting at all stages of reintroduction could significantly contribute to positive welfare and conservation outcomes, and research comparing mortality rates, health risks, and post-release stress is urgently needed (ibid).
Enfranchising the Individual Animal
Proponents for compassionate conservation maintain that current conservation policy is founded on a “limited anthropocentric version of utilitarianism,” and advocate for alternative paradigms such as deontology, deep ecology, and Leopold’s land ethic to reject this “shallow”-ness (Ramp and Bekoff, 2015: 6; see also Fraser, 2010). They emphasize that a such an approach would not promote the interests of individual welfare over that of the ecosystem, but rather bring individual animals into the decision-making space where they have long been ignored (Ramp & Bekoff, 2015).[17]
Underlying the scholarship on human-animal relations from a sustainability perspective are inconsistent accounts for the perspective of the individual animal, as demonstrated in the absence of interdisciplinary welfare and sustainability studies, especially regarding wildlife. I posit that incorporating animal experiences in sustainability promotes the development of more holistic, ‘animal-considerate’ indicators for “socio-ecological system integrity” (Gibson, 2006). The sustainable human-animal relation I propose aims to ‘bring the animals back in’[18]to sustainability assessments, just as studies of animal performativity in geography “bring-biology-in” to better “examine how societal relations of power work with and through individual animals themselves” (Hovorka, 2015: 9, citing Birke, Bryl & Lykke, 2004).
There is an argument to be made for integrating studies of animal agency into sustainability to garner a better incorporation of animal circumstances (Bear, 2011; Main & Chambers, 2014). Animal studies scholarship compliments animal welfare science and conservation, in trying to understand their subjective experience of pain and pleasure, and in viewing animals as “active architects of the landscape”, respectively (Whatmore & Thorne, 2000: 201). This plurality of perspectives allows humans and animals to be considered as part of a network of “dwelt encounters” (Hovorka, 2018a). To center animals in discussions of sustainability, therefore requires in decentering humans– which animal scholars are well-positioned to do.
From a justice and political philosophy perspective,[19]there is a need for ‘animal-sized spaces’[20]in government, policy making and regulations–one which enfranchises animals as stakeholders in political matters concerning their welfare and species-integrity (Kymlicka & Donaldson, 2014). How can we shift the fora in which discussions of sustainability take place, from an ‘animal space’ of human ordering, towards a ‘beastly place’ attuned to animal agency?[21]
One way to account for animal experiences in our relations with them is to acknowledge the animal’s own ‘gaze.’ This shifts the status of animals from viewed(i.e., through a zoological/objectifying gaze) to that of viewer, which imbues them with agency and interests. Acknowledging this can detangle the broader transnational, multispecies power webs at play, and be used to develop a more inclusiveframework of sustainability by acknowledging their stakeholdership (Ahuja, 2009). This has promising implications as it relates to considering all affected interests and mitigating trade-offs to achieve a sustainable human-animal relation. Currently, there is a gap in the sustainability scholarship to this affect, which drawing on political philosophy and animal studies may help address.
Typology of Human-Animal Relations
To improve relations along a sustainability framework requires the pursuit of multiple reinforcing gains, multi-scalar stakeholdership, and resiliency. An understanding of the way humans construct animals in various phenomena of relations, however, is in need of more research.
Indicators of sustainability measure anthropogenic impacts on the environment,[22]and the goal of the sustainable human-animal relation I propose presently not only focuses on reducing negative impacts on animals, but also promotes positive reinforcing gains for animal actors in human-animal relations. This reasoning follows the logic of “positive welfare indicators” and “positive affective states” from welfare science,[23]and also animal studies’ critical turn in excavating for animal subjectivities, performativity, and agency in research (Geiger & Hovorka, 2015; Hovorka, 2017; 2018; Mellor, 2012; 2015; 2016).
Here I advance the idea of four broad types of human-animal relations: (1)Positive-Positive; (2)Positive Human-Negative Animal; (3)Negative Human-Positive Animal; and (4)Negative Human-Negative Animal (see Appendix B).The first human-animal relation is one with positive gains for animals (in terms of their conservation, welfare, and experience) and for humans (in many respects including economically, emotionally, and developmentally). In the current paradigm of human-animal relations, such mutualistic circumstances are few and far between, despite being the most sustainable and ethically permissible since they espouse more ecocentric and rightist ethics of care. An example of this relation is domestic pet ownership, ‘hard’ ecotourism such as wildlife-watching(Bateman & Fleming, 2017; Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2015; Kontogeorgopoulos, 2009), and animal labour from a solidarity perspective (Coulter, 2016).
As an aside, currently the industrialization of tourism complies with instrumentalist paradigms of animal use such that some scholars classify any form of wildlife tourism as problematic (Yudina & Grimwood, 2017). Thus, even ‘soft’ ecotourism can fall under Positive Human-Negative Animalrelations. Research suggests, however, that there is an over-reporting on negative impacts of tourism activities on wild animals, and that tourism may be “less problematic than feared,” since there can be net positive impacts– particularly on endangered species’ survival, and through support of conservation initiatives over a long-term (Bateman & Fleming, 2017; Buckley et al., 2016). Thus, ‘hard’ wildlife ecotourism, which complies with sustainability principles, has been recognized as a positive social force for transformative change. An example of this are wildlife sanctuaries.[24]These are likely the most sustainable destinations for animal tourism– and may even be a “paradigm shifter” (Kontogeorgopolous, 2009).
Conversely, an example of a negative human-positive animalrelations would be a national park in which animals are granted sovereignty, and the local or indigenous communities which relied on the animals for bushmeat or other ecosystem services are restricted from accessing them as a resource. The corresponding ethic to this relation would be ecocentric, rightist, biocentric, or ecofeminist—ascribing to the land an ethic of care and ‘no-use’ policy. With the shift from fortress/preservationist conservation towards limited-extractive use, ecosystem services, and sustainable development, this is a less common relation today.
Finally, an example of a negative-negative relation would be a human-wildlife conflict scenario, the corresponding ethics of which depends on the cultural context. Applicable here are examples ofcrop-raiding elephants. This perpetuates conflict and poverty amongst community members who were originally dispossesed of their land in the creation of national parks to ‘contain’ the elephants within imposed boundaries– which the animals act on their agency to transgress (Barua, 2014; Dickman, 2010; Mayberry et al., 2017). Human-wildlife conflict impacts socio-ecological integrity which threatens sustainability.
In this framework of relations, where do zoos fit? Zoos tell us about ourselves— or rather the relationships we have with animals. The way we choose to empower or suppress animal agency with material or epistemological constructions reflects our ethics, morals, and paradigms. Consequently, to condemn a wildlife tourism industry which often endangers the welfare and conservation of animals, would require condemning ourselves. This offers some explanation as to why the processes of transforming the tourism industry to account for the circumstances of animals who suffer within it is slow-going (Fennell, 2012).
Some more progressive zoos may facilitate sustainable relations, with gains for humans and animals (positive-positive). Despite thegradual shift from anthropocentric to more ecocentric-minded zoo design and conception, however, the former paradigm still reigns globally (Fennell, 2012). Most wildlife tourism falls under the Positive Humans-Negative Animalsrelation– especially in light of Moorhouse et al.’s sobering global investigation of attractions (2015).
But who are the ‘humans’ for which wildlife tourism is positive in this scenario? Arguably tourists who experience zoophilic pleasure, the tourism agency and attraction which receive economic gains, and possibly the local community in which the attraction takes place. The subsuming of tourists with local community member stakeholders, under the guise of “human” in the framework I propose, is surely an area for unpacking. A more comprehensive framework would divide human (and potentially animal) stakeholders accordingly. This is beyond the scope of this paper, which I intend as a starting point for theorizing sustainable relations. It is noteworthy, however, that the unequal distribution of the profits from both tourism and ecotourism to local stakeholders is a persistent issue and arguably the most difficult to address within the industry (Duffy, 2014; Honey, 2008; Horton, 2009; Mbaiwa, 2004; 2018). One way in which to achieve a more sustainable human-animal relation is to decentralize power within ecotourism from the national level to the local level. This could ensure benefits to both the conservation of the natural environment and the development of the social environment, ergo, supporting socio-ecological integrity (Gibson, 2006).
Ideally, a ‘sustainable’ human-animal relation would follow an ‘ethic of care’ similar to one proposed by ecofeminist scholars, with the potential to improve interspecies relationships. This ethic of care involves attending to animals’ communicated desires, such that we attend to “what they are telling us” (Donovan, 2006: 310). Bulbeck argues that we should value emotional responses to animals, and that sites where human-animal relations occur should encourage affective encounters as a manner of “respectful stewardship.” This is a call to abandon our modernist separation from nature and adopt a post-modern relationship with animals which relinquishes “our desire for authenticity” and instead “embrace[s] our hybrid nature” (Bulbeck, 2005: 184).
Conclusion
To summarize the foregoing sections: sustainability is a holistic, value-laden concept which requires a shift towards interdisciplinary and ecocentric paradigms of human-animal relations to achieve its multiple reinforcing gains. In approaches to sustainability, animals feature typically at a population/species level in conservation biology and tourism scholarship, and at an individual level in welfare science and animal geography, with some exceptions.
Historically, the reluctance to include animals in decision-making stems from the belief that animal (i.e., ‘beastly’) nature is antithetical to order, democracy, and rationality. A “sharp distinction” between “human moral freedom and animal freedom” has been drawn, with the latter “strictly controlled” to keep animals “outside the polis,” and internally controlled “through conscious self-restraint of animal passions and appetites” (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2014). This paradigm needs dismantling. I argue that animals’ status in sustainability scholarship should be elevated to that of stakeholders, since they are directly impacted by the relations and processes in which we involve them. They should ‘have a voice’ in anything involving their interests.
How do we give voice to animals, or rather, how do we listen to them? Currently, there is a call for zoocentric approaches to animal governance that privileges animal perspectives. It is a difficult and inherently imperfect task, however, for any human to see through the eyes of, say, their own pet— let alone that of a broiler breeder in an industrialized farming complex. There are increasing studies, however, that indicate animals can declare their subjective good through interspecies communication, motivation, choice, and cognitive bias studies—known as “asking animals how they feel” (Duncan 2006; Meijer 2013; von Essen & Allen 2017). There are even more promising developments in establishing “non-linguistic solidarity relation” with animals, which involves observing body language and “kinaesthetic empathy” (von Essen & Allen 2017).
With such progress attuned to the individual agencies of animals, the potential for the ‘good’ of animals to not only be interpreted by human representatives, but in the future empower animals to speak for themselves, manifests. There are already confirmed ways of communicating with animals that do not include a common language, but rather involve studying their behaviour, motivation, and choices; asking, what gives them pleasure? A sustainable human-animal relation is one which asks, and answers, this question.
Works Cited
Ahuja, N. (2009). Postcolonial Critique in a Multispecies World. PMLA, 124(2), 556–563.
Anderson, K. (1995). Culture and Nature at the Adelaide Zoo: At the Frontiers of “Human” Geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 20(3), 275–294. https://doi.org/10.2307/622652
Bach, L., & Burton, M. (2017). Proximity and animal welfare in the context of tourist interactions with habituated dolphins. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25(2), 181–197. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1195835
Barua, M. (2014). Bio-Geo-Graphy: Landscape, Dwelling, and the Political Ecology of Human-Elephant Relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(5), 915–934. https://doi.org/10.1068/d4213
Bateman, P. W., & Fleming, P. A. (2017). Are negative effects of tourist activities on wildlife over-reported? A review of assessment methods and empirical results. Biological Conservation, 211, 10–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2017.05.003
Bear, C. (2011). Being Angelica? Exploring individual animal geographies: Being Angelica? Area, 43(3), 297–304. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.2011.01019.x
Beausoleil, N. J., Mellor, D. J., Baker, L., Baker, S. E., Bellio, M., Clarke, A. S., … Zito, S. (2018). “Feelings and Fitness” Not “Feelings or Fitness”–The Raison d’être of Conservation Welfare, Which Aligns Conservation and Animal Welfare Objectives. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2018.00296
Belicia, T., & Islam, M. (2018). Towards a Decommodified Wildlife Tourism: Why Market
Environmentalism Is Not Enough for Conservation. Societies,8(3), 59. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc8030059
Bennett, N. J., Roth, R., Klain, S. C., Chan, K. M. A., Clark, D. A., Cullman, G., … Veríssimo, D. (2017). Mainstreaming the social sciences in conservation: Mainstreaming the Social Sciences. Conservation Biology, 31(1), 56–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12788
Birke, Lynda, Mette Bryl, and Nina Lykke. 2004. “Animal Performances: An Exploration of
Intersections Between Feminist Science Studies and Studies of Human/Animal Relationships.”Feminist Theory 5 (2): 167–183.
Bolla, A. K., & Hovorka, A. J. (2012). Placing Wild Animals in Botswana: Engaging Geography’s Transspecies Spatial Theory, 3(2), 27.
Bramwell, B., & Lane, B. (2014). The “critical turn” and its implications for sustainable tourism research. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 22(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2013.855223
Brockington, D., & Duffy, R. (2010). Capitalism and Conservation: The Production and Reproduction of Biodiversity Conservation. Antipode, 42(3), 469–484. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00760.x
Broom, D.M. (2010) Animal welfare: an aspect of care, sustainability, and food
quality required by the public. J Vet Med Educ 37:83–88
Broom, D. M. (2011). A History of Animal Welfare Science. Acta Biotheoretica, 59(2), 121–137. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-011-9123-3
Buckley, R. C., Morrison, C., & Castley, J. G. (2016). Net Effects of Ecotourism on Threatened Species Survival. PLOS ONE, 11(2), e0147988. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147988
Bulbeck, Chilla. (2005). Facing the Wild: Ecotourism, Conservation, and Animal Encounters.
Earthscan, London.
Büscher, B., Sullivan, S., Neves, K., Igoe, J., & Brockington, D. (2012). Towards a Synthesized Critique of Neoliberal Biodiversity Conservation.Capitalism Nature Socialism, 23(2), 4–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2012.674149
Butler, R. W. (1999). Sustainable tourism: A state‐of‐the‐art review. Tourism Geographies, 1(1), 7–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616689908721291
Campbell, L. M. (2005). Overcoming Obstacles to Interdisciplinary Research. Conservation Biology, 19(2), 574–577. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00058.x
Campbell, L. M. (2007). Local Conservation Practice and Global Discourse: A Political Ecology of Sea Turtle Conservation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(2), 313–334. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2007.00538.x
Carder, G, Proctor, H., Schmidt-Burbach, J., & D’cruze, N. (2016). The animal welfare implications of civet coffee tourism in Bali. Animal Welfare, 25(2), 199–205. https://doi.org/10.7120/09627286.25.2.199
Carder, Gemma, Plese, T., Machado, F., Paterson, S., Matthews, N., McAnea, L., & D’Cruze, N. (2018). The Impact of ‘Selfie’ Tourism on the Behaviour and Welfare of Brown-Throated Three-Toed Sloths. Animals, 8(11), 216. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani8110216
Cater, E. (2006). Ecotourism as a Western Construct. Journal of Ecotourism, 17.
Chang, L., Fang, Q., Zhang, S., Poo, M., & Gong, N. (2015). Mirror-Induced Self-Directed Behaviors in Rhesus Monkeys after Visual-Somatosensory Training. Current Biology, 25(2), 212–217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.11.016
Cohen, E. (2008). The Changing Faces of Contemporary Tourism. Society,45(4), 330–333. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-008-9108-2
Cohen, E. (2013). “Buddhist Compassion” and “Animal Abuse” in Thailand’s Tiger Temple. Society & Animals, 21(3), 266–283. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-12341282
Cohen, E., & Cohen, S. A. (2015). Beyond Eurocentrism in tourism: a paradigm shift to mobilities. Tourism Recreation Research, 40(2), 157–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2015.1039331
Coulter K. (2016). Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity. Palgrave
Macmillan, New York
Das, M., & Chatterjee, B. (2015). Ecotourism: A panacea or a predicament? Tourism Management Perspectives, 14, 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2015.01.002
Dawkins, M. S. (1998). Evolution and Animal Welfare. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 73(3), 305–328.
D’Cruze, N., Machado, F. C., Matthews, N., Balaskas, M., Carder, G., Richardson, V., & Vieto, R. (2017). A review of wildlife ecotourism in Manaus, Brazil. Nature Conservation, 22, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.22.17369
Depledge, M. H., & Galloway, T. S. (2005). Healthy Animals, Healthy Ecosystems. Frontiers in
Ecology and the Environment, 3(5), 251–258. https://doi.org/10.2307/3868487
Dickman, A. J. (2010). Complexities of conflict: the importance of considering social factors for effectively resolving human-wildlife conflict: Social factors affecting human-wildlife conflict resolution. Animal Conservation, 13(5), 458–466. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-1795.2010.00368.x
Donaldson, S., & Kymlicka, W. (2015). Farmed animal sanctuaries: The heart of the movement. Politics and Animals, 1(1), 50–74.
Donovan, J. (2006). Feminism and the Treatment of Animals: From Care to Dialogue. Signs:
Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 31(2), 305–329.
Doubleday, K. F. (2017). Nonlinear liminality: Human-animal relations on preserving the world’s most famous tigress. Geoforum, 81, 32–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.02.005
Draper, C., & Bekoff, M. (2013). Animal welfare and the importance of compassionate conservation – A comment on McMahon et al. (2012). Biological Conservation, 158, 422–423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2012.10.024
Duffy, R. (2014). Interactive elephants: Nature, tourism and neoliberalism. Annals of Tourism Research, 44, 88–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.09.003
Duffy, R. (2015). Nature-based tourism and neoliberalism: concealing contradictions. Tourism Geographies, 17(4), 529–543. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2015.1053972
Duncan, Ian .J.H. (2006) “The changing concept of animal sentience”, Applied Animal
Behaviour Science, 100: 11-19.
Evans, L. A., & Adams, -->William M. (2016). Fencing elephants: The hidden politics of wildlife fencing in Laikipia, Kenya. Land Use Policy,51, 215–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.11.008
Fennell, D. (2012). Tourism and Animal Ethics. 1st ed. New York City: Taylor and Francis.
Fraser, D. (2010). Toward a synthesis of conservation and animal welfare science.
Fraser-Celin, V.-L., Hovorka, A. J., & Silver, J. J. (2018). Human conflict over wildlife: exploring social constructions of African wild dogs ( Lycaon pictus)in Botswana. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2018.1443528
Gamborg, C., & Sandøe, P. (2005). Sustainability in farm animal breeding: a review. Livestock Production Science, 92(3), 221–231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.livprodsci.2004.08.010
Gavin, M. C., McCarter, J., Mead, A., Berkes, F., Stepp, J. R., Peterson, D., & Tang, R. (2015). Defining biocultural approaches to conservation. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 30(3), 140–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2014.12.005
Geiger, M., & Hovorka, A. J. (2015). Animal performativity: Exploring the lives of donkeys in Botswana. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(6), 1098–1117. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775815604922
Gibson, R. B. (2006). Sustainability assessment: basic components of a practical approach. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 24(3), 170–182. https://doi.org/10.3152/147154606781765147
Harrington, L. A., Moehrenschlager, A., Gelling, M., Atkinson, R. P. D., Hughes, J., & Macdonald, D. W. (2013). Conflicting and Complementary Ethics of Animal Welfare Considerations in Reintroductions: Welfare in Reintroductions. Conservation Biology, 27(3), 486–500. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12021
Higgins-Desbiolles, F. (2006). More than an “industry”: The forgotten power of tourism as a social force. Tourism Management, 27(6), 1192–1208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2005.05.020
Honey, M. (2008). Ecotourism and Sustainable Development.
Horton, L. R. (2009). Buying Up Nature: Economic and Social Impacts of Costa Rica’s Ecotourism Boom. Latin American Perspectives, 36(3), 93–107. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X09334299
Hovorka, A. J. (2015). The Gender, Place and Culture Jan Monk Distinguished Annual Lecture: Feminism and animals: exploring interspecies relations through intersectionality, performativity and standpoint. Gender, Place & Culture, 22(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2014.993546
Hovorka, A. J. (2017). Animal geographies I: Globalizing and decolonizing. Progress in Human Geography, 41(3), 382–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516646291
Hovorka, A. J. (2018a). Animal geographies II: Hybridizing. Progress in Human Geography,
42(3), 453–462. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132517699924
Hovorka, A. J. (2018b). Animal geographies III: Species relations of power. Progress in Human Geography, 030913251877583. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132518775837
Huntingford, F. A., Adams, C., Braithwaite, V. A., Kadri, S., Pottinger, T. G., Sandoe, P., & Turnbull, J. F. (2006). Current issues in fish welfare. Journal of Fish Biology, 68(2), 332–372. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-1112.2006.001046.x
Kirksey, S. E., & Helmreich, S. (2010). THE EMERGENCE OF MULTISPECIES ETHNOGRAPHY. Cultural Anthropology, 25(4), 545–576. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2010.01069.x
Kirkwood, J. K., & Sainsbury, A. W. (1996). Ethics of interventions for the welfare of free-living wild animals. ANIMAL WELFARE-POTTERS BAR-,5, 235–244.
Kontogeorgopoulos, N. (2009). Wildlife tourism in semi-captive settings: a case study of elephant camps in northern Thailand. Current Issues in Tourism, 12(5–6), 429–449. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500903042873
Kymlicka, Will and Sue Donaldson (2014) “Animals and the Frontiers of Citizenship”,
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 34/2:200-219.
Lestel, D., Brunois, F., & Gaunet, F. (2006). Etho-ethnology and ethno-ethology. Social Science Information, 45(2), 155–177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018406063633
Lorimer, J. (2007). Nonhuman Charisma. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25(5), 911–932. https://doi.org/10.1068/d71j
Lorimer, J. (2010). Elephants as companion species: the lively biogeographies of Asian elephant conservation in Sri Lanka. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35(4), 491–506.
Main, M. E., & Chambers, C. N. L. (2014). Between “Wild” and “Tame”: Placing Encounters with Sirocco the Kakapo Parrot in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Society & Animals, 22(1), 57–79. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-12341319
Mayberry, A. L., Hovorka, A. J., & Evans, K. E. (n.d.). Well-Being Impacts of Human-Elephant Conflict in Khumaga, Botswana:, 12.
Mbaiwa, J. E. (2018). Effects of the safari hunting tourism ban on rural livelihoods and wildlife conservation in Northern Botswana. South African Geographical Journal, 100(1), 41–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/03736245.2017.1299639
McShane, T. O., Hirsch, P. D., Trung, T. C., Songorwa, A. N., Kinzig, A., Monteferri, B., … O’Connor, S. (2011). Hard choices: Making trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and human well-being. Biological Conservation, 144(3), 966–972. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2010.04.038
Meine, C., Soulé, M ,&Noss, R .F. (2006). “A mission-driven discipline”: the growth of
conservation biology. Conservation Biology. 20, 631–651.
Meijer, Eva (2013) “Political Communication with Animals,” Humanimalia 5/1: 28-52.
Ménard, N., Foulquier, A., Vallet, D., Qarro, M., Le Gouar, P., & Pierre, J.-S. (2014). How tourism and pastoralism influence population demographic changes in a threatened large mammal species: Tourism and pastoralism effects on mammal demography. Animal Conservation, 17(2), 115–124. https://doi.org/10.1111/acv.12063
Moorhouse, T., D’Cruze, N. C., & Macdonald, D. W. (2017). Unethical use of wildlife in tourism: what’s the problem, who is responsible, and what can be done? Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25(4), 505–516. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1223087
Moorhouse, T. P., Dahlsjö, C. A. L., Baker, S. E., D’Cruze, N. C., & Macdonald, D. W. (2015). The Customer Isn’t Always Right—Conservation and Animal Welfare Implications of the Increasing Demand for Wildlife Tourism. PLOS ONE, 10(10), e0138939. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138939
Mossaz, A., Buckley, R. C., & Castley, J. G. (2015). Ecotourism contributions to conservation of African big cats. Journal for Nature Conservation, 28, 112–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2015.09.009
Mustika, P. L. K., Welters, R., Ryan, G. E., D’Lima, C., Sorongon-Yap, P., Jutapruet, S., & Peter, C. (2017). A rapid assessment of wildlife tourism risk posed to cetaceans in Asia. Journal of Sustainable Tourism,25(8), 1138–1158. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1257012
Ohl, F., & Putman, R. J. (2014). Animal Welfare at the Group Level: More Than the Sum of Individual Welfare? Acta Biotheoretica, 62(1), 35–45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-013-9205-5
Orams, M. B. (2002). Feeding wildlife as a tourism attraction: a review of issues and impacts.
Tourism Management, 23(3), 281–293.
Paquet, P., & Darimont, C. (2010). Wildlife conservation and animal welfare: two sides of the same coin? Animal Welfare, 14.
Pooley, S. (2016). A cultural herpetology of nile crocodiles in Africa. Conservation and Society, 14(4), 391. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.197609
Ramp, D., & Bekoff, M. (2015). Compassion as a practical and evolved ethic for conservation. BioScience, 65(3), 323–327.
Redpath, S. M., Young, J., Evely, A., Adams, W. M., Sutherland, W. J., Whitehouse, A., … Gutiérrez, R. J. (2013). Understanding and managing conservation conflicts. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 28(2), 100–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2012.08.021
Risan, L. C. (2005). The Boundary of Animality. Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space, 23(5), 787–793.
Richter, J. N., Hochner, B., & Kuba, M. J. (2016). Pull or Push? Octopuses Solve a Puzzle Problem. PLOS ONE, 11(3), e0152048. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0152048
Soulé, M.E. (1985). What is conservation biology? BioScience, 35(11), 727-734.
Soulé, M. (2013). The “New Conservation”: Editorial. Conservation Biology, 27(5), 895–897. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12147
Twine, R. (2010). Animals As Biotechnology : Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies.
London: Routledge.
von Essen, Erica and Allen, Michael P. (2017) “Solidarity Between Human and Non-
Human Animals: Representing Animal Voices in Policy Deliberations.” Environmental Communication 11/5: 641–653.
WAP. (2018). Associated with cruelty: How travel trade associations are ignoring wild animal
abuse. World Animal Protection.
WCED, 1987. Our Common Future. World Commission on Environ- ment and Development.
Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Wearing, S. L., Cunningham, P. A., Schweinsberg, S., & Jobberns, C. (2014). Whale watching as ecotourism: How sustainable is it? Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 38–55.
Whatmore, S., & Thorne, L. (2000). Elephants on the Move: Spatial Formations of Wildlife Exchange. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18(2), 185–203. https://doi.org/10.1068/d210t
Yudina, O., & Fennell, D. (2013). Ecofeminism in the Tourism Context: A Discussion of the Use of Other-than-human Animals as Food in Tourism. Tourism Recreation Research, 38(1), 55–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2013.11081729
Yudina, O., & Grimwood, B. S. R. (2016). Situating the wildlife spectacle: ecofeminism, representation, and polar bear tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 24(5), 715–734. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2015.1083996
[1]Consider the use of animal ambassadors for various animal-interest industries and groups, especially the success of charismatic megafauna and keystone species in generating public support for conservation (Anderson, 1995; Bolla & Hovorka, 2012; Doubleday, 2017; Hovorka, 2018; Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010; Lorimer, 2007, 2010; Main & Chambers, 2014; Whatmore & Thorne, 2000).
[2]Animals are also referred to as ‘non-human animals’ and ‘more-than-human animals’.
[3]I write “win-win” with some hesitancy, as I’m aware that often in sustainability discussions such an outcome is rarely a reality. While my sustainable human-animal relation argument may be criticized as idealist and simplistic, I hope it serves as a starting point for theorizing not only the kinds of relations we want with animals, but also the kinds of relations theywant with us.
[4]This is consistent with Gibson’s criteria that sustainability assessments occur in “open, dynamic, multi-scalar systems” and that “the means and ends are intertwined and the process is open-ended” without an end state to achieve (Gibson, 2006: 172).
[5]One example with promising implications is thebiocultural approach(Gavin et al., 2015), which aims to preserve the biophysical and sociocultural diversity of the socio-ecosystem.
[6]While the example here is sustainability as it relates to conservation, see (Geiger & Hovorka, 2015; Hovorka, 2018a; Risan, 2005) for a perspective on animal agency, performativity, etc. with regards to working and agricultural animals. See also the book: McFarland, S. E., & Hediger, R. (2009). Animals and agency an interdisciplinary exploration. Leiden: Brill.
[7]Whereas, to contrast, their subjectivity refers to their lived experience (ibid).
[8]Elephants are protected by the state.
[9]N.B. In conflict conservation scholarship, the proliferation of win-win rhetoric does not accurately reflect the majority of mitigation strategies and is often misleading, since trade-offs and hard choices are the most common outcomes (Brockington & Duffy, 2010; McShane et al., 2011). In fact, no conservation conflict has ever been truly, lastingly resolved as a win-win, but some have managed to significantly minimise damaging impacts (Dickman, 2010; Redpath et al., 2013). A successful mitigation results in all stakeholders accepting the management outcome and not imposing their interests to the detriment of others, particularly marginalized groups or entities.
[10]Ecofeminismis an ethic of care, which explores “shared oppressions and simultaneous degradation of women and animals to expose their material pairing and broader conceptual dualisms” (Hovorka, 2015: 5).
[11]In this way, wildlife tourism uses the sustainability tool of “triple bottom-line assessment,” by considering the “social,” “ecological,” and “economic” effects in maintaining the sustainability of the business and natural resources it depends upon (Gibson, 2006).
[12]Buckley RC, Castley JG, Pegas FdV, Mossaz AC, Steven R (2012) A Population Accounting Approach to Assess Tourism Contributions to Conservation of IUCN-Redlisted Mammal Species. PLoS ONE 7(9): e44134. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044134
[13]http://blogs.plos.org/thestudentblog/2016/05/20/is-ecotourism-an-effective-conservation-tool/
[14]Ecotourism opportunities can replace more harmful, unsustainable extractive resource use in natural areas such as mining, logging, poaching, etc.
[15]Belicia, Teo & Islam, Md. (2018). Towards a Decommodified Wildlife Tourism: Why Market Environmentalism Is Not Enough for Conservation. Societies. 8. 59. 10.3390/soc8030059.
[16]Orams, M. B. (2000). The economic benefits of whale-watching in Vava’u, The Kingdom of Tonga. Centre for Tourism Research, Massey University at Albany, New Zealand.
[17]Such calls are common amongst conservation and welfare researchers for “cross-disciplinary information-sharing”, “collaborative research”, and a “common language” to facilitate this process—and may constitute a new discipline called “conservation welfare” (Beausoleil et al., 2018:1), similar to compassionate conservation described here.
[18]A phrase borrowed from animal geography. See Wolch, Jennifer, and Jody Emel. 1995. “Guest Editorial on ‘Bringing the Animals Back In’.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13: 632–636.
[19]Justice perspectives typically refer to those who espouse Animal Rights and ethics of care.
[20]For example, The Netherlands has a political party which advocates for animals, with 5 seats in the House of Representatives: https://www.partyfortheanimals.nl
[21]A “beastly place” refers to a lived nonhuman experience whereas an “animal space,” in contrast, is ordered by humans (Lorimer, 2010).
[22]See Appendix 1 for a list of sustainability indicators for wildlife ecotourism.
[23]The study of positive affective states and ‘what gives animals pleasure’ is a major research avenue in animal welfare science which requires more study.
[24]Needless to say, I mean a properly run and accredited wildlife sanctuary which follows animal-first ethics of care.
Introduction
Origins of Sustainable Approaches to Animals
Unearthing Animal Agency with Geography
Wild Animals in Sustainable Tourism
Animal Welfare’s influence on Sustainability
Enfranchising the Individual Animal
Typology of Human-Animal Relations
Conclusion
Works Cited
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Introduction
Animals tell us about ourselves. The way we interact with them on a daily basis, and those which whom we choose to interact, in varying ways, speaks not only to our own personal ethics, but to the larger moral paradigms we exist in. Why do we malign some animals with language such as ‘pest’ or ‘invasive’ while others we esteem as members of our families or ambassadors[1]of their species? Why do we extend moral consideration to those who look like us, act like us, and think like us, while those who appear alien, without emotion or intelligence, are denied moral standing? Consider the rabbit: to some a pest, others a pet or a source of food; we can carry diverse relations with even a singular species.
To have these species hierarchies in this common era, when we still know remarkably little about animal cognition, emotion, and experiences seems archaic. Frequently discoveries are made attributing higher-order processing and sentience to species once-thought unable to feel pain or think (Chang, et al., 2015; Huntingford et al., 2006; Richter et al. 2016). The legacy of speciesism, tracing back to the Great Chain of Being and Cartesian binaries of man/nature and civilized/savage uncannily tracks the discrimination of marginalized human groups based on gender, race, and ability (Fennell, 2012, 2014; Hovorka, 2015; Yudina & Fennell, 2013; Yudina & Grimwood, 2016). The issue of the ‘animal’,or rather how we relate to them, is an intersectional one, indicated by the many diverse fields of scholarship which focus on this subject.[2]To interrogate human-animal relations necessarily requires a holistic approach, since focusing on only one part of the equation (animal or human) would be remiss, as our lives are inexorably entangled.
A useful concept for teasing apart the complexities ofhuman-animal relationsis sustainability. The two are theoretically similar; both require interdisciplinary and contextual considerations, and are laden with ethical and moral conundrums that speak to larger social and historical processes. In this paper, I advance the idea of a ‘sustainable’ human-animal relation; one which is mutually beneficial with positive gains for both parties and promotes the dissolution of entrenched boundaries between human/animal. I will consider how such a win-winrelation[3]can be examined through the lenses of conservation science, animal welfare, and animal studies—grounding my argument with examples from the scholarship on wildlife tourism.
Origins of Sustainable Approaches to AnimalsSustainability, conservation biology, and animal welfare sciences have all been described in turn as ‘mandated’ disciplines. They are mission-driven, value-laden, and even crisis-oriented as they deal with the phenomena of human-environment relations, which can be both mutualistic and thorny (Gibson, 2006; Fraser, 2010; Meine, Soulé, & Noss, 2006; Soulé, 1985). The study of human-animal relations, more specifically, occurs in these scholarly realms and will be expounded on in this section, which aims to emphasize their interconnectedness as they relate to sustainability.
The ecosystemconcept was introduced during the biological sciences’ 20thcentury revolution– integrating knowledge of the entire biotic and abiotic living system, genetics, population biology, and evolution–to understand trophic levels and ecological niches (Soulé, 1985). In 1939, Aldo Leopold posited that all biota should be valued as a whole, instead of individual species rated on their instrumental use to humans. Thus, the study of conservation shifted towards a more holistic objective of assessing and maintaining “a state of health in the land” (ibid: 634). In 1970, the journal Biological Conservationwas first published in which David Ehrenfeld wrote that the discipline was forged “in that turbulent and vital area where biology meets the social sciences and humanities” (Soulé, 1985: 636). Soulé’s seminal 1985 paper “What is conservation biology?” attended to this call for interdisciplinarity and a plurality of worldviews to address biodiversity conservation. At this time, there was increasing awareness not only of species extinction, but also the impact of globalization and development in emerging economies such as the Global South, where environments were typically more biodiverse but conversely sensitive to resource extraction.
The concept of sustainabilityhas likewise evolved over time from one which focused on resource-management, an anthropocentric position, towards an increasingly ecocentric paradigm which holistically considers the ecological, economic, social, and intra-generational impacts of humans on the natural world (Fraser, 2010). Nested under this topic, sustainable developmentwas defined in the 1987 “Brundtland” commission as the ability to meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987: 8). The pursuit of sustainability, which seeks to ensure the long-term persistence of diverse human and non-human communities (i.e. animals), was in part born of these intersections between alleviating poverty in the developing world and wildlife conservation.
Robert Gibson’s influential paper on sustainability assessments serves as a basis for considering ‘sustainable’ human-animal relations (2006). He writes that sustainability addresses two large, intertwining issues: the yawning chasm between the world’s rich and poor, and the degradation of the natural environment– ergo “socio-economic” and “biophysical matters,” respectively (ibid: 172). Amongst the sustainability scholarship, the chief way in which animals have been included are as the latter– i.e. part of natural resource management and ecosystem services (Despledge & Galloway, 2005; Robinson & Bennett, 2000), of agriculture systems (Broom 2010; Twine, 2010), and of tourism (Gibson, 2006). Interestingly, in Gibson’s paper the word “animal” is never mentioned, and “species” is only mentioned once. This reveals a common theme throughout the sustainability literature: the presence of animal lives is often shadow-y, and their circumstances usually lumped under larger conceptual headings such as “biophysical matters” and “socio-ecological integrity.”
Gibson’s criteria for a sustainable system in language and concept most closely relates to the work of conservation science. He writes that the aim of sustainability is to produce “multiple reinforcing gains,” and that trade-offs are “a last resort,” since we should “encourage positive steps towards greater community and ecological sustainability” (ibid: 172). When a trade-off occurs it is often between human interests and biodiversity conservation, but they canlead to more sustainable outcomes (McShane et al., 2011). These decisions should be decided between multiple perspectives and levels of stakeholdership and are context-dependent on the culture in which it is implemented (ibid).[4]
In discussions of stakeholdership, however, one wonders: ‘where are the animals?’ How are their individual experiences accounted for in such deliberations? If sustainability concerns both ecological and social contexts, then to achieve a ‘sustainable human-animal relation’ would require a paradigm shift. This may be achieved through a different, socio-ecological approach to conservation[5], integrating animal welfare and animal agency into sustainability frameworks.
The social sciences are not an “optional,” but rather a “vital” component for conservation decision-making and management (Bennett, et al., 2017a: 104), especially for their capacity to analyze research using deductive and inductive reasoning. Social scientists should be included in the initial planning stages onwards through all stages of research (Campbell, 2005). Integrating research on human and ecological dimensions into conservation practice may prove useful in addressing the “intractable problems” of conservation conflicts. These originate from “a deeper cognitive level […] linked to power relations, changing attitudes, and values that are rooted in social and cultural history” (Redpath et al., 2013: 100). Furthermore, it can generate hybrid solutions which shift current interrogative priorities from “what is the price of nature?” to “what kind of nature do we want?” (Büscher et al., 2012: 25).
A significant debate exists, however, within conservation between “nature protectionists” and “social conservationists” (McShane et al., 2011). While some scholars espousing the latter position see the benefit of limited-extractive use at conservation sites and community-based conservation (Campbell, 2007; Gavin et al., 2015), many protected areas often employ the former position, also called ‘fortress conservation’ (Duffy, 2017). This is an approach to natural resource management which implements physical boundaries to define protected areas and the animals within them (Evans & Adams, 2016). This method has been criticized for “actualising the nature-society divide” (ibid: 216), and Duffy writes that the “militarisation” of conservation through the employment of armed conservation enforcement and surveillance such as rangers “breathes new life” into fortress conservation (2017). Indeed, boundaries in conservation are “often an outcome of a complex, contested negotiation between different actors” and seek to both conceptually and physically separate the human from the non-human (Evans and Adams, 2016: 216).
Conversely, Soulé penned a criticism on this ‘new conservation’ (i.e. ‘social conservation’), which seeks to achieve conservation goals by alleviating global poverty and espousing sustainable resource use (Soulé, 2013). He suggests that implementing social conservation principles in practice would be to the detriment of protecting keystone and endangered species and natural reserves—since social conservation’s interest in protecting nature emerges from its material usefulness to humans, not its intrinsic value, and is therefore an anthropocentric episteme. Soulé’s critique thereby acknowledges animal circumstances, if only at a species-level. This debate within the discipline has important implications of whether human or non-human interests are prioritized when considering sustainability in a conservation context.
Unearthing Animal Agency with Geography
How can animal agencies be accounted for in sustainability?[6]Animal agency refers to an animal’s ability to influence relational networks and the environment (Hovorka, 2018b).[7]Animal geographers may develop “lively” biogeographies incorporating the natural and social sciences, which may also be referred to as the merging of ethology and ethnology (Lestel, Brunois, & Gaunet, 2006;Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010). Barua explores this issue by examining the cohabitation of humans and elephants through fieldwork in India, developing a “dwelt political ecology” (Barua, 2014). He asks how postcolonial history can be recorded in a way which “does not render inert” animal agencies and writes that some more-than-human geographers address this conundrum by “rematerializing” and “reanimating” landscapes as “dwelt achievements” between people and animals (ibid: 916).
Barua relates the severing of nature from society to the containment of elephants in fenced-off forest reserves, while locals exist outside of that construction (2014). Elephants trespass the human-imposed boundaries and enter the domain of the local population time and time again. By tracking the elephants’ movement, a “vital and relational topography” is generated as the elephant herd engage in “spacemaking” through human-elephant encounters (ibid: 922-3). In this context, elephants are not a marginalized group[8], and contribute to increased poverty amongst local populations (i.e., crop-raiding, etc.). This biogeography is “written by human and elephant bodies” (p.923) and highlights intragroup differences amongst elephants as possessing individual ethologies and “lifeworlds” (p.929). If one were to apply a sustainability framework to human-elephant relations in this example, it would be crucial to consider how the elephants’ lifeworlds influence the socio-ecological integrity. Elephants should be given stakeholdership, since as ‘spacemakers’ they actively influence the sustainability of the surrounding human community.
Despite the effort to protect wildlife, the territorialized “people-free” fortress approach has been criticized for reproducing colonial legacies of land dispossession (Evans and Adams, 2016; Gavin et al., 2015) both for local people living in to-be-protected areas, and for wild animals whose sovereignty is “appropriated” by “human encroachment” (Evans and Adams, 2016 citing Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011). As a result of these protected areas where enforced physical boundaries define the lives and range of the wildlife they contain, human-wildlife conflictcan result as in the previous example (Redpath et al., 2013).[9]
As a strategy for re-conceptualizing conflict mitigation, some scholars have even put forth the idea of evolving the term human-wildlife conflicttowards a more accurate descriptive: human-human conflict over wildlife. The reasoning behind this shift is that “human-wildlife conflict” assumes wildlife “are conscious human antagonists.” Separating conflicts where humans are directly interacting with wildlife, from those between human groups in debate over wildlife issues, is an important distinction since they will be conceptualized and addressed differently (Redpath et al., 2013: 100). This is especially true given how people’s ingrained attitudes, perceived vulnerability, and retaliatory responses towards ‘problem’ species can alter over time based on social influences (Dickman, 2010:459). Therefore, increased scholarship on quantifying the perceived and actual costs of wildlife conflict would be useful, combined with more social research into people’s perceptions of wildlife-caused damage, the cultural status of the ‘problem’ animal, and their retaliatory strategies (ibid). Social science scholarship has made headway exploring the human dimension of conservation conflicts (Campbell, 2007; Evans & Adams, 2016; Fraser-Celin, Hovorka, & Silver, 2018, p.; Mayberry, Hovorka, & Evans, 2017; Pooley, 2016).
Whereas more “preservationist” paradigms may inhibit solutions to conflict over wildlife, community-based conservation and sustainable use has proven successful in certain contexts despite placing an economic value on animals(Campbell, 2007). With a political ecology approach, Campbell examined a Costa Rican sea turtle conservation initiative managed by a community with limited-extractive access for commercial and consumptive use of sea turtle eggs (ibid). The author writes: “By allowing people to use wildlife resources, sustainable use attempts to ensure that wildlife conservation can compete with other habitat uses” (ibid: 318). Nevertheless, visiting tourists tended to view the regulated egg harvest negatively as endangering sea turtle conservation. Meanwhile, the socio-ecological arguments made in the harvest’s favour suggest that ending the harvest could lead to less nesting, loss of local livelihoods, and an increase in illegal egg harvesting.
Wild Animals in Sustainable Tourism
Animals are a major component of the global tourism industry, with estimates of nearly a million individuals featured in attractions worldwide (Moorhouse et al., 2015). Currently, most wildlife tourism is not sustainable because it exists within an anthropocentric, capitalist paradigm (i.e., lack of regulation, ‘greenwashing’, endangerment of animal lives, etc.) (Duffy, 2014; Moorhouse et al., 2017; WAP, 2018). Known also as market environmentalism,this paradigm commodifies animals in tourism and fuels their role as resources for entertainment and fiscal gain (Belicia & Islam, 2018).
Recently there has been a critical turn in sustainable tourism research towards a focus on tourist attitudes: the social constructions of tourism, different world views and political insights, and the production of unequal power relations (Bramwell & Lane, 2014; Carder et al., 2018; Honey, 2008).For example, Mossaz, et al. conclude that conservation tourism is effective for ‘big cats’ when it integrates ecological, social, legal, and market factors, and suggest future conservation studies involve local communities and social research (2015). The sustainability of the industry “depends on integrating visitor demands with resource management,” “an understanding of tourist motivation” (Bach & Burton, 2017: 181), and of the overall tourist experience (Carder et al., 2018).Ecofeminists argue, however, that truly ‘sustainable’ tourism attraction (ergo, ‘ecotourism’) prioritizes the welfare and conservation of wild animals, and de-prioritizes the tourist experience of the encounter (Bulbeck, 2005).[10]Moorhouse et al. (2017) echo this stance, arguing that a “subjective norm” for the ethical use of wildlife in tourism should be promoted so tourists can limit any adverse impacts on involved species.[11]
The concept of sustainable tourismgrew from the notion of sustainable development, and its use is a value-laden and much-debated topic which can be viewed from an economic, ecological, long-term viability, and sustainable development perspective (Butler, 1999). The success of the term lies in its indefinable nature, and “thus has become all things to all interested parties” (ibid: 11). Sustainable tourism is not necessarily the same as tourism developed along sustainable development principles, since the former is often (erroneously) treated as a single-sector and the latter is multi-sectoral and holistic in nature (ibid). Conceptions of sustainable tourism have tended to focus on the sustainability of the tourism operation and location itself, as opposed to the environmental or social contexts. Applying the tenants of sustainable tourism requires clear, measurable indicators which account for a nexus of human, economic, and environmental factors (ibid).
The number of eco-tourists is growing three times faster than conventional tourists (Das & Chatterjee, 2015). While some scholars extoll the positive impacts of ecotourism, others are hesitant to deem it a panacea(ibid). Some maintain that ecotourism is a Western construct and neoliberalizes nature (animals included) in a way that packages it for tourist consumption and perpetuates inequalities at the local level of host communities (Cater, 2006; Cohen, 2008; Cohen & Cohen, 2015; Duffy, 2014; 2015; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2006; Horton, 2009).
The experiences of animal lives, on an individual welfare basis, seem to only be recently garnering attention in the tourism literature (Carder, et al., 2016; D’Cruze et al., 2017; Moorhouse, et al., 2015). D’Cruze et al. suggest more research is needed on wildlife ecotourism, since their case study found it to be ineffectively regulated which endangered the welfare of wild animal individuals, thereby their species-level conservation and the ultimate sustainability of the attraction and the ecosystem itself (2017). This ‘snowball effect’ has important implications for sustainability and requires more holistic research to understand.
While there are examples of ecotourism’s negative impact on wildlife conservation (Moorhouse et al. 2015; Mbaiwa 2018), animal welfare (Moorhouse et al. 2015; D’Cruze et al. 2017), and the conservation and development of local communities (Horton 2009), other studies are in support of its transformative potential. Buckley et al. determined about 84% of funding for national parks agencies globally are derived from ecotourism (2012).[12]The authors note that while scientists’ concern for the expanding tourism industry has historically focused on disturbance to wildlife as a result of development, the conservation of threatened mammal species is dependent on tourism revenue to a previously unanticipated degree (ibid). Revenue from ecotourism supports different processes of wild animal governance including translocation, breeding and anti-poaching programs.[13]
Currently, ecotourism appears to be an imperfect, but better-than-the-alternative[14]solution for achieving sustainability. An irresponsibility managed operation may endanger sustainability of the wild population through removal of individuals, triggering a change in feeding and reproductive behaviour, causing stress or physiological illnesses, or increasing susceptibility to poaching (Ménard et al., 2014). Certification schemes and guiding criteria, such as on TripAdvisor, are necessary to clarify the legal status of wildlife tourism attractions. More research is also needed on the permissibility of food provisioning to facilitate wildlife encounters, and how to shift demand for a ‘touch’ encounter between tourists and animals to a ‘no touch one (Belicia & Islam, 2018[15]; D’Cruze et al., 2017; Moorhouse et al., 2017; Orams, 2000[16]).
World Animal Protection’s 2018 report on wildlife tourism recounted a survey of sixty-two travel trade associations, of which just twenty-one had a webpage on sustainable tourism, only three had animal welfare guidelines within their stated “sustainability programs”, and only one monitored the welfare guidelines’ implementations (WAP, 2018). They maintain that “sustaining demand [for wildlife entertainment] perpetuates a never-ending cycle of cruelty” (WAP, 2018:11). As well, travel trade associations have “a critical role” in reducing this demand by deeming “unacceptable” those attractions which seriously endanger welfare as a necessary step towards “recogni[zing] best practices” and a more “wildlife-friendly future” (i.e. ban ‘tiger selfies,’ ‘elephant riding’, etc. (Cohen, 2013; Kontogeorgopoulos, 2009)) (WAP, 2018: 11).
It is likely there will always be a trade-off between conservation, welfare, visitor satisfaction, and revenue generation– but a well-managed ecotourism operation with a confluence of positive animal welfare states, positive conservation impacts, and tangible benefits to the local community could have transformative power and be truly sustainable.
Animal Welfare’s influence on Sustainability
Welfare accounts for the experiences of individual animals, and as Broom writes, “a system that results in poor welfare is unsustainable” (2010). Historically welfare was thought to be an impediment to conservation and natural resource management, considered “conceptually distinct” and to “remain politically separate” (Soulé, 1985:731). The emergence of sub-fields such as ‘compassionate conservation’ and studies of welfare at the group level attempt to address this gap (Draper & Bekoff, 2013; Ohl & Putman, 2014; Paquet & Darimont, 2010; Ramp & Bekoff, 2015). Despite being a necessary component of any human-animal relation, the experiences of individual animals are not always considered in the sustainability scholarship– something von Essen and Allen might call “the failure to acknowledge and formalize animal presence in participation […] [and the] failure to understandtheir subjective goods” (2017).
Another barrier to integrating welfare with conservation and sustainability studies is that most welfare scholarship is within the agricultural, research, and domestic animal sector. Even then, discussions of sustainability appear uncommon; few papers consider sustainable animal health, breeding, and reproduction (Gamborg & Sandøe, 2005). Within the agricultural industry there is a need to define sustainability in clearer and more practical terms, since prioritizing discussions of sustainability “obliges decision-makers” towards a “unified perspective” (ibid). In their paper on the sustainability of farm animal breeding, Gamborg and Sandøe note that not only does the concept of sustainability “depend heavily on the values and priorities” of those who define it, but that “there is no single, correct account of the requirements of sustainability” (ibid: 229). They posit rather that sustainability should be considered as a “conceptual ‘umbrella’ under which different visions and beliefs, more or less closely connected, shelter” (ibid).
Some argue there has yet to be an applied ethical foundation for conservation which incorporates animal welfare (Paquet & Darimont, 2010), and that the utilitarian conservation practice in which individual animals are sacrificed for the good of the population (i.e., ‘the ends justify the means’), could be considered “environmental fascism” (ibid: 22). Thus, affording conservation and welfare equal priority seems like an intractable problem; how can we weigh bothindividuals andpopulations as intrinsically valuable? Paquet and Darimont ask, "Is it even possible to design economically-viable societies that protect the welfare of animals and are ecologically sustainable?” (ibid: 23).
While conservation activities influence the survival, biological fitness, and welfare of wild animals, likewise activities which impact welfare can influence the achievement of conservation goals, and therefore the socio-ecological integrity of a system (Beausoleil et al., 2018; Broom, 2011; Dawkins, 1998; Kirkwood & Sainsbury, 1996).A review of all terrestrial vertebrate reintroduction studies since 1990 found that little research has been done to gather empirical data or even discuss the ethical dilemmas surrounding the welfare impacts of wild animal reintroductions, and that conservation practitioners have been slow to incorporate welfare concerns in this area (Harrington et al., 2013). Most studies claimed reintroduction was successful, but seldom mentioned costs to the project in terms of animal stress and body condition. This is a significant considering most studies reported one or more negative impacts on individuals (i.e., predation, dispersal, disease, human conflict, etc.), but rarely mentioned welfare or ethics explicitly (ibid). The authors conclude that improving implementation, monitoring, and reporting at all stages of reintroduction could significantly contribute to positive welfare and conservation outcomes, and research comparing mortality rates, health risks, and post-release stress is urgently needed (ibid).
Enfranchising the Individual Animal
Proponents for compassionate conservation maintain that current conservation policy is founded on a “limited anthropocentric version of utilitarianism,” and advocate for alternative paradigms such as deontology, deep ecology, and Leopold’s land ethic to reject this “shallow”-ness (Ramp and Bekoff, 2015: 6; see also Fraser, 2010). They emphasize that a such an approach would not promote the interests of individual welfare over that of the ecosystem, but rather bring individual animals into the decision-making space where they have long been ignored (Ramp & Bekoff, 2015).[17]
Underlying the scholarship on human-animal relations from a sustainability perspective are inconsistent accounts for the perspective of the individual animal, as demonstrated in the absence of interdisciplinary welfare and sustainability studies, especially regarding wildlife. I posit that incorporating animal experiences in sustainability promotes the development of more holistic, ‘animal-considerate’ indicators for “socio-ecological system integrity” (Gibson, 2006). The sustainable human-animal relation I propose aims to ‘bring the animals back in’[18]to sustainability assessments, just as studies of animal performativity in geography “bring-biology-in” to better “examine how societal relations of power work with and through individual animals themselves” (Hovorka, 2015: 9, citing Birke, Bryl & Lykke, 2004).
There is an argument to be made for integrating studies of animal agency into sustainability to garner a better incorporation of animal circumstances (Bear, 2011; Main & Chambers, 2014). Animal studies scholarship compliments animal welfare science and conservation, in trying to understand their subjective experience of pain and pleasure, and in viewing animals as “active architects of the landscape”, respectively (Whatmore & Thorne, 2000: 201). This plurality of perspectives allows humans and animals to be considered as part of a network of “dwelt encounters” (Hovorka, 2018a). To center animals in discussions of sustainability, therefore requires in decentering humans– which animal scholars are well-positioned to do.
From a justice and political philosophy perspective,[19]there is a need for ‘animal-sized spaces’[20]in government, policy making and regulations–one which enfranchises animals as stakeholders in political matters concerning their welfare and species-integrity (Kymlicka & Donaldson, 2014). How can we shift the fora in which discussions of sustainability take place, from an ‘animal space’ of human ordering, towards a ‘beastly place’ attuned to animal agency?[21]
One way to account for animal experiences in our relations with them is to acknowledge the animal’s own ‘gaze.’ This shifts the status of animals from viewed(i.e., through a zoological/objectifying gaze) to that of viewer, which imbues them with agency and interests. Acknowledging this can detangle the broader transnational, multispecies power webs at play, and be used to develop a more inclusiveframework of sustainability by acknowledging their stakeholdership (Ahuja, 2009). This has promising implications as it relates to considering all affected interests and mitigating trade-offs to achieve a sustainable human-animal relation. Currently, there is a gap in the sustainability scholarship to this affect, which drawing on political philosophy and animal studies may help address.
Typology of Human-Animal Relations
To improve relations along a sustainability framework requires the pursuit of multiple reinforcing gains, multi-scalar stakeholdership, and resiliency. An understanding of the way humans construct animals in various phenomena of relations, however, is in need of more research.
Indicators of sustainability measure anthropogenic impacts on the environment,[22]and the goal of the sustainable human-animal relation I propose presently not only focuses on reducing negative impacts on animals, but also promotes positive reinforcing gains for animal actors in human-animal relations. This reasoning follows the logic of “positive welfare indicators” and “positive affective states” from welfare science,[23]and also animal studies’ critical turn in excavating for animal subjectivities, performativity, and agency in research (Geiger & Hovorka, 2015; Hovorka, 2017; 2018; Mellor, 2012; 2015; 2016).
Here I advance the idea of four broad types of human-animal relations: (1)Positive-Positive; (2)Positive Human-Negative Animal; (3)Negative Human-Positive Animal; and (4)Negative Human-Negative Animal (see Appendix B).The first human-animal relation is one with positive gains for animals (in terms of their conservation, welfare, and experience) and for humans (in many respects including economically, emotionally, and developmentally). In the current paradigm of human-animal relations, such mutualistic circumstances are few and far between, despite being the most sustainable and ethically permissible since they espouse more ecocentric and rightist ethics of care. An example of this relation is domestic pet ownership, ‘hard’ ecotourism such as wildlife-watching(Bateman & Fleming, 2017; Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2015; Kontogeorgopoulos, 2009), and animal labour from a solidarity perspective (Coulter, 2016).
As an aside, currently the industrialization of tourism complies with instrumentalist paradigms of animal use such that some scholars classify any form of wildlife tourism as problematic (Yudina & Grimwood, 2017). Thus, even ‘soft’ ecotourism can fall under Positive Human-Negative Animalrelations. Research suggests, however, that there is an over-reporting on negative impacts of tourism activities on wild animals, and that tourism may be “less problematic than feared,” since there can be net positive impacts– particularly on endangered species’ survival, and through support of conservation initiatives over a long-term (Bateman & Fleming, 2017; Buckley et al., 2016). Thus, ‘hard’ wildlife ecotourism, which complies with sustainability principles, has been recognized as a positive social force for transformative change. An example of this are wildlife sanctuaries.[24]These are likely the most sustainable destinations for animal tourism– and may even be a “paradigm shifter” (Kontogeorgopolous, 2009).
Conversely, an example of a negative human-positive animalrelations would be a national park in which animals are granted sovereignty, and the local or indigenous communities which relied on the animals for bushmeat or other ecosystem services are restricted from accessing them as a resource. The corresponding ethic to this relation would be ecocentric, rightist, biocentric, or ecofeminist—ascribing to the land an ethic of care and ‘no-use’ policy. With the shift from fortress/preservationist conservation towards limited-extractive use, ecosystem services, and sustainable development, this is a less common relation today.
Finally, an example of a negative-negative relation would be a human-wildlife conflict scenario, the corresponding ethics of which depends on the cultural context. Applicable here are examples ofcrop-raiding elephants. This perpetuates conflict and poverty amongst community members who were originally dispossesed of their land in the creation of national parks to ‘contain’ the elephants within imposed boundaries– which the animals act on their agency to transgress (Barua, 2014; Dickman, 2010; Mayberry et al., 2017). Human-wildlife conflict impacts socio-ecological integrity which threatens sustainability.
In this framework of relations, where do zoos fit? Zoos tell us about ourselves— or rather the relationships we have with animals. The way we choose to empower or suppress animal agency with material or epistemological constructions reflects our ethics, morals, and paradigms. Consequently, to condemn a wildlife tourism industry which often endangers the welfare and conservation of animals, would require condemning ourselves. This offers some explanation as to why the processes of transforming the tourism industry to account for the circumstances of animals who suffer within it is slow-going (Fennell, 2012).
Some more progressive zoos may facilitate sustainable relations, with gains for humans and animals (positive-positive). Despite thegradual shift from anthropocentric to more ecocentric-minded zoo design and conception, however, the former paradigm still reigns globally (Fennell, 2012). Most wildlife tourism falls under the Positive Humans-Negative Animalsrelation– especially in light of Moorhouse et al.’s sobering global investigation of attractions (2015).
But who are the ‘humans’ for which wildlife tourism is positive in this scenario? Arguably tourists who experience zoophilic pleasure, the tourism agency and attraction which receive economic gains, and possibly the local community in which the attraction takes place. The subsuming of tourists with local community member stakeholders, under the guise of “human” in the framework I propose, is surely an area for unpacking. A more comprehensive framework would divide human (and potentially animal) stakeholders accordingly. This is beyond the scope of this paper, which I intend as a starting point for theorizing sustainable relations. It is noteworthy, however, that the unequal distribution of the profits from both tourism and ecotourism to local stakeholders is a persistent issue and arguably the most difficult to address within the industry (Duffy, 2014; Honey, 2008; Horton, 2009; Mbaiwa, 2004; 2018). One way in which to achieve a more sustainable human-animal relation is to decentralize power within ecotourism from the national level to the local level. This could ensure benefits to both the conservation of the natural environment and the development of the social environment, ergo, supporting socio-ecological integrity (Gibson, 2006).
Ideally, a ‘sustainable’ human-animal relation would follow an ‘ethic of care’ similar to one proposed by ecofeminist scholars, with the potential to improve interspecies relationships. This ethic of care involves attending to animals’ communicated desires, such that we attend to “what they are telling us” (Donovan, 2006: 310). Bulbeck argues that we should value emotional responses to animals, and that sites where human-animal relations occur should encourage affective encounters as a manner of “respectful stewardship.” This is a call to abandon our modernist separation from nature and adopt a post-modern relationship with animals which relinquishes “our desire for authenticity” and instead “embrace[s] our hybrid nature” (Bulbeck, 2005: 184).
Conclusion
To summarize the foregoing sections: sustainability is a holistic, value-laden concept which requires a shift towards interdisciplinary and ecocentric paradigms of human-animal relations to achieve its multiple reinforcing gains. In approaches to sustainability, animals feature typically at a population/species level in conservation biology and tourism scholarship, and at an individual level in welfare science and animal geography, with some exceptions.
Historically, the reluctance to include animals in decision-making stems from the belief that animal (i.e., ‘beastly’) nature is antithetical to order, democracy, and rationality. A “sharp distinction” between “human moral freedom and animal freedom” has been drawn, with the latter “strictly controlled” to keep animals “outside the polis,” and internally controlled “through conscious self-restraint of animal passions and appetites” (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2014). This paradigm needs dismantling. I argue that animals’ status in sustainability scholarship should be elevated to that of stakeholders, since they are directly impacted by the relations and processes in which we involve them. They should ‘have a voice’ in anything involving their interests.
How do we give voice to animals, or rather, how do we listen to them? Currently, there is a call for zoocentric approaches to animal governance that privileges animal perspectives. It is a difficult and inherently imperfect task, however, for any human to see through the eyes of, say, their own pet— let alone that of a broiler breeder in an industrialized farming complex. There are increasing studies, however, that indicate animals can declare their subjective good through interspecies communication, motivation, choice, and cognitive bias studies—known as “asking animals how they feel” (Duncan 2006; Meijer 2013; von Essen & Allen 2017). There are even more promising developments in establishing “non-linguistic solidarity relation” with animals, which involves observing body language and “kinaesthetic empathy” (von Essen & Allen 2017).
With such progress attuned to the individual agencies of animals, the potential for the ‘good’ of animals to not only be interpreted by human representatives, but in the future empower animals to speak for themselves, manifests. There are already confirmed ways of communicating with animals that do not include a common language, but rather involve studying their behaviour, motivation, and choices; asking, what gives them pleasure? A sustainable human-animal relation is one which asks, and answers, this question.
Works Cited
Ahuja, N. (2009). Postcolonial Critique in a Multispecies World. PMLA, 124(2), 556–563.
Anderson, K. (1995). Culture and Nature at the Adelaide Zoo: At the Frontiers of “Human” Geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 20(3), 275–294. https://doi.org/10.2307/622652
Bach, L., & Burton, M. (2017). Proximity and animal welfare in the context of tourist interactions with habituated dolphins. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25(2), 181–197. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1195835
Barua, M. (2014). Bio-Geo-Graphy: Landscape, Dwelling, and the Political Ecology of Human-Elephant Relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(5), 915–934. https://doi.org/10.1068/d4213
Bateman, P. W., & Fleming, P. A. (2017). Are negative effects of tourist activities on wildlife over-reported? A review of assessment methods and empirical results. Biological Conservation, 211, 10–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2017.05.003
Bear, C. (2011). Being Angelica? Exploring individual animal geographies: Being Angelica? Area, 43(3), 297–304. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.2011.01019.x
Beausoleil, N. J., Mellor, D. J., Baker, L., Baker, S. E., Bellio, M., Clarke, A. S., … Zito, S. (2018). “Feelings and Fitness” Not “Feelings or Fitness”–The Raison d’être of Conservation Welfare, Which Aligns Conservation and Animal Welfare Objectives. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2018.00296
Belicia, T., & Islam, M. (2018). Towards a Decommodified Wildlife Tourism: Why Market
Environmentalism Is Not Enough for Conservation. Societies,8(3), 59. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc8030059
Bennett, N. J., Roth, R., Klain, S. C., Chan, K. M. A., Clark, D. A., Cullman, G., … Veríssimo, D. (2017). Mainstreaming the social sciences in conservation: Mainstreaming the Social Sciences. Conservation Biology, 31(1), 56–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12788
Birke, Lynda, Mette Bryl, and Nina Lykke. 2004. “Animal Performances: An Exploration of
Intersections Between Feminist Science Studies and Studies of Human/Animal Relationships.”Feminist Theory 5 (2): 167–183.
Bolla, A. K., & Hovorka, A. J. (2012). Placing Wild Animals in Botswana: Engaging Geography’s Transspecies Spatial Theory, 3(2), 27.
Bramwell, B., & Lane, B. (2014). The “critical turn” and its implications for sustainable tourism research. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 22(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2013.855223
Brockington, D., & Duffy, R. (2010). Capitalism and Conservation: The Production and Reproduction of Biodiversity Conservation. Antipode, 42(3), 469–484. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00760.x
Broom, D.M. (2010) Animal welfare: an aspect of care, sustainability, and food
quality required by the public. J Vet Med Educ 37:83–88
Broom, D. M. (2011). A History of Animal Welfare Science. Acta Biotheoretica, 59(2), 121–137. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-011-9123-3
Buckley, R. C., Morrison, C., & Castley, J. G. (2016). Net Effects of Ecotourism on Threatened Species Survival. PLOS ONE, 11(2), e0147988. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147988
Bulbeck, Chilla. (2005). Facing the Wild: Ecotourism, Conservation, and Animal Encounters.
Earthscan, London.
Büscher, B., Sullivan, S., Neves, K., Igoe, J., & Brockington, D. (2012). Towards a Synthesized Critique of Neoliberal Biodiversity Conservation.Capitalism Nature Socialism, 23(2), 4–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2012.674149
Butler, R. W. (1999). Sustainable tourism: A state‐of‐the‐art review. Tourism Geographies, 1(1), 7–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616689908721291
Campbell, L. M. (2005). Overcoming Obstacles to Interdisciplinary Research. Conservation Biology, 19(2), 574–577. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00058.x
Campbell, L. M. (2007). Local Conservation Practice and Global Discourse: A Political Ecology of Sea Turtle Conservation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(2), 313–334. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2007.00538.x
Carder, G, Proctor, H., Schmidt-Burbach, J., & D’cruze, N. (2016). The animal welfare implications of civet coffee tourism in Bali. Animal Welfare, 25(2), 199–205. https://doi.org/10.7120/09627286.25.2.199
Carder, Gemma, Plese, T., Machado, F., Paterson, S., Matthews, N., McAnea, L., & D’Cruze, N. (2018). The Impact of ‘Selfie’ Tourism on the Behaviour and Welfare of Brown-Throated Three-Toed Sloths. Animals, 8(11), 216. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani8110216
Cater, E. (2006). Ecotourism as a Western Construct. Journal of Ecotourism, 17.
Chang, L., Fang, Q., Zhang, S., Poo, M., & Gong, N. (2015). Mirror-Induced Self-Directed Behaviors in Rhesus Monkeys after Visual-Somatosensory Training. Current Biology, 25(2), 212–217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.11.016
Cohen, E. (2008). The Changing Faces of Contemporary Tourism. Society,45(4), 330–333. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-008-9108-2
Cohen, E. (2013). “Buddhist Compassion” and “Animal Abuse” in Thailand’s Tiger Temple. Society & Animals, 21(3), 266–283. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-12341282
Cohen, E., & Cohen, S. A. (2015). Beyond Eurocentrism in tourism: a paradigm shift to mobilities. Tourism Recreation Research, 40(2), 157–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2015.1039331
Coulter K. (2016). Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity. Palgrave
Macmillan, New York
Das, M., & Chatterjee, B. (2015). Ecotourism: A panacea or a predicament? Tourism Management Perspectives, 14, 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2015.01.002
Dawkins, M. S. (1998). Evolution and Animal Welfare. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 73(3), 305–328.
D’Cruze, N., Machado, F. C., Matthews, N., Balaskas, M., Carder, G., Richardson, V., & Vieto, R. (2017). A review of wildlife ecotourism in Manaus, Brazil. Nature Conservation, 22, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.22.17369
Depledge, M. H., & Galloway, T. S. (2005). Healthy Animals, Healthy Ecosystems. Frontiers in
Ecology and the Environment, 3(5), 251–258. https://doi.org/10.2307/3868487
Dickman, A. J. (2010). Complexities of conflict: the importance of considering social factors for effectively resolving human-wildlife conflict: Social factors affecting human-wildlife conflict resolution. Animal Conservation, 13(5), 458–466. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-1795.2010.00368.x
Donaldson, S., & Kymlicka, W. (2015). Farmed animal sanctuaries: The heart of the movement. Politics and Animals, 1(1), 50–74.
Donovan, J. (2006). Feminism and the Treatment of Animals: From Care to Dialogue. Signs:
Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 31(2), 305–329.
Doubleday, K. F. (2017). Nonlinear liminality: Human-animal relations on preserving the world’s most famous tigress. Geoforum, 81, 32–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.02.005
Draper, C., & Bekoff, M. (2013). Animal welfare and the importance of compassionate conservation – A comment on McMahon et al. (2012). Biological Conservation, 158, 422–423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2012.10.024
Duffy, R. (2014). Interactive elephants: Nature, tourism and neoliberalism. Annals of Tourism Research, 44, 88–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.09.003
Duffy, R. (2015). Nature-based tourism and neoliberalism: concealing contradictions. Tourism Geographies, 17(4), 529–543. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2015.1053972
Duncan, Ian .J.H. (2006) “The changing concept of animal sentience”, Applied Animal
Behaviour Science, 100: 11-19.
Evans, L. A., & Adams, -->William M. (2016). Fencing elephants: The hidden politics of wildlife fencing in Laikipia, Kenya. Land Use Policy,51, 215–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.11.008
Fennell, D. (2012). Tourism and Animal Ethics. 1st ed. New York City: Taylor and Francis.
Fraser, D. (2010). Toward a synthesis of conservation and animal welfare science.
Fraser-Celin, V.-L., Hovorka, A. J., & Silver, J. J. (2018). Human conflict over wildlife: exploring social constructions of African wild dogs ( Lycaon pictus)in Botswana. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2018.1443528
Gamborg, C., & Sandøe, P. (2005). Sustainability in farm animal breeding: a review. Livestock Production Science, 92(3), 221–231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.livprodsci.2004.08.010
Gavin, M. C., McCarter, J., Mead, A., Berkes, F., Stepp, J. R., Peterson, D., & Tang, R. (2015). Defining biocultural approaches to conservation. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 30(3), 140–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2014.12.005
Geiger, M., & Hovorka, A. J. (2015). Animal performativity: Exploring the lives of donkeys in Botswana. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(6), 1098–1117. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775815604922
Gibson, R. B. (2006). Sustainability assessment: basic components of a practical approach. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 24(3), 170–182. https://doi.org/10.3152/147154606781765147
Harrington, L. A., Moehrenschlager, A., Gelling, M., Atkinson, R. P. D., Hughes, J., & Macdonald, D. W. (2013). Conflicting and Complementary Ethics of Animal Welfare Considerations in Reintroductions: Welfare in Reintroductions. Conservation Biology, 27(3), 486–500. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12021
Higgins-Desbiolles, F. (2006). More than an “industry”: The forgotten power of tourism as a social force. Tourism Management, 27(6), 1192–1208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2005.05.020
Honey, M. (2008). Ecotourism and Sustainable Development.
Horton, L. R. (2009). Buying Up Nature: Economic and Social Impacts of Costa Rica’s Ecotourism Boom. Latin American Perspectives, 36(3), 93–107. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X09334299
Hovorka, A. J. (2015). The Gender, Place and Culture Jan Monk Distinguished Annual Lecture: Feminism and animals: exploring interspecies relations through intersectionality, performativity and standpoint. Gender, Place & Culture, 22(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2014.993546
Hovorka, A. J. (2017). Animal geographies I: Globalizing and decolonizing. Progress in Human Geography, 41(3), 382–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516646291
Hovorka, A. J. (2018a). Animal geographies II: Hybridizing. Progress in Human Geography,
42(3), 453–462. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132517699924
Hovorka, A. J. (2018b). Animal geographies III: Species relations of power. Progress in Human Geography, 030913251877583. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132518775837
Huntingford, F. A., Adams, C., Braithwaite, V. A., Kadri, S., Pottinger, T. G., Sandoe, P., & Turnbull, J. F. (2006). Current issues in fish welfare. Journal of Fish Biology, 68(2), 332–372. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-1112.2006.001046.x
Kirksey, S. E., & Helmreich, S. (2010). THE EMERGENCE OF MULTISPECIES ETHNOGRAPHY. Cultural Anthropology, 25(4), 545–576. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2010.01069.x
Kirkwood, J. K., & Sainsbury, A. W. (1996). Ethics of interventions for the welfare of free-living wild animals. ANIMAL WELFARE-POTTERS BAR-,5, 235–244.
Kontogeorgopoulos, N. (2009). Wildlife tourism in semi-captive settings: a case study of elephant camps in northern Thailand. Current Issues in Tourism, 12(5–6), 429–449. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500903042873
Kymlicka, Will and Sue Donaldson (2014) “Animals and the Frontiers of Citizenship”,
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 34/2:200-219.
Lestel, D., Brunois, F., & Gaunet, F. (2006). Etho-ethnology and ethno-ethology. Social Science Information, 45(2), 155–177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018406063633
Lorimer, J. (2007). Nonhuman Charisma. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25(5), 911–932. https://doi.org/10.1068/d71j
Lorimer, J. (2010). Elephants as companion species: the lively biogeographies of Asian elephant conservation in Sri Lanka. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35(4), 491–506.
Main, M. E., & Chambers, C. N. L. (2014). Between “Wild” and “Tame”: Placing Encounters with Sirocco the Kakapo Parrot in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Society & Animals, 22(1), 57–79. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-12341319
Mayberry, A. L., Hovorka, A. J., & Evans, K. E. (n.d.). Well-Being Impacts of Human-Elephant Conflict in Khumaga, Botswana:, 12.
Mbaiwa, J. E. (2018). Effects of the safari hunting tourism ban on rural livelihoods and wildlife conservation in Northern Botswana. South African Geographical Journal, 100(1), 41–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/03736245.2017.1299639
McShane, T. O., Hirsch, P. D., Trung, T. C., Songorwa, A. N., Kinzig, A., Monteferri, B., … O’Connor, S. (2011). Hard choices: Making trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and human well-being. Biological Conservation, 144(3), 966–972. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2010.04.038
Meine, C., Soulé, M ,&Noss, R .F. (2006). “A mission-driven discipline”: the growth of
conservation biology. Conservation Biology. 20, 631–651.
Meijer, Eva (2013) “Political Communication with Animals,” Humanimalia 5/1: 28-52.
Ménard, N., Foulquier, A., Vallet, D., Qarro, M., Le Gouar, P., & Pierre, J.-S. (2014). How tourism and pastoralism influence population demographic changes in a threatened large mammal species: Tourism and pastoralism effects on mammal demography. Animal Conservation, 17(2), 115–124. https://doi.org/10.1111/acv.12063
Moorhouse, T., D’Cruze, N. C., & Macdonald, D. W. (2017). Unethical use of wildlife in tourism: what’s the problem, who is responsible, and what can be done? Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25(4), 505–516. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1223087
Moorhouse, T. P., Dahlsjö, C. A. L., Baker, S. E., D’Cruze, N. C., & Macdonald, D. W. (2015). The Customer Isn’t Always Right—Conservation and Animal Welfare Implications of the Increasing Demand for Wildlife Tourism. PLOS ONE, 10(10), e0138939. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138939
Mossaz, A., Buckley, R. C., & Castley, J. G. (2015). Ecotourism contributions to conservation of African big cats. Journal for Nature Conservation, 28, 112–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2015.09.009
Mustika, P. L. K., Welters, R., Ryan, G. E., D’Lima, C., Sorongon-Yap, P., Jutapruet, S., & Peter, C. (2017). A rapid assessment of wildlife tourism risk posed to cetaceans in Asia. Journal of Sustainable Tourism,25(8), 1138–1158. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1257012
Ohl, F., & Putman, R. J. (2014). Animal Welfare at the Group Level: More Than the Sum of Individual Welfare? Acta Biotheoretica, 62(1), 35–45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-013-9205-5
Orams, M. B. (2002). Feeding wildlife as a tourism attraction: a review of issues and impacts.
Tourism Management, 23(3), 281–293.
Paquet, P., & Darimont, C. (2010). Wildlife conservation and animal welfare: two sides of the same coin? Animal Welfare, 14.
Pooley, S. (2016). A cultural herpetology of nile crocodiles in Africa. Conservation and Society, 14(4), 391. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.197609
Ramp, D., & Bekoff, M. (2015). Compassion as a practical and evolved ethic for conservation. BioScience, 65(3), 323–327.
Redpath, S. M., Young, J., Evely, A., Adams, W. M., Sutherland, W. J., Whitehouse, A., … Gutiérrez, R. J. (2013). Understanding and managing conservation conflicts. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 28(2), 100–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2012.08.021
Risan, L. C. (2005). The Boundary of Animality. Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space, 23(5), 787–793.
Richter, J. N., Hochner, B., & Kuba, M. J. (2016). Pull or Push? Octopuses Solve a Puzzle Problem. PLOS ONE, 11(3), e0152048. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0152048
Soulé, M.E. (1985). What is conservation biology? BioScience, 35(11), 727-734.
Soulé, M. (2013). The “New Conservation”: Editorial. Conservation Biology, 27(5), 895–897. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12147
Twine, R. (2010). Animals As Biotechnology : Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies.
London: Routledge.
von Essen, Erica and Allen, Michael P. (2017) “Solidarity Between Human and Non-
Human Animals: Representing Animal Voices in Policy Deliberations.” Environmental Communication 11/5: 641–653.
WAP. (2018). Associated with cruelty: How travel trade associations are ignoring wild animal
abuse. World Animal Protection.
WCED, 1987. Our Common Future. World Commission on Environ- ment and Development.
Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Wearing, S. L., Cunningham, P. A., Schweinsberg, S., & Jobberns, C. (2014). Whale watching as ecotourism: How sustainable is it? Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 38–55.
Whatmore, S., & Thorne, L. (2000). Elephants on the Move: Spatial Formations of Wildlife Exchange. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18(2), 185–203. https://doi.org/10.1068/d210t
Yudina, O., & Fennell, D. (2013). Ecofeminism in the Tourism Context: A Discussion of the Use of Other-than-human Animals as Food in Tourism. Tourism Recreation Research, 38(1), 55–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2013.11081729
Yudina, O., & Grimwood, B. S. R. (2016). Situating the wildlife spectacle: ecofeminism, representation, and polar bear tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 24(5), 715–734. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2015.1083996
[1]Consider the use of animal ambassadors for various animal-interest industries and groups, especially the success of charismatic megafauna and keystone species in generating public support for conservation (Anderson, 1995; Bolla & Hovorka, 2012; Doubleday, 2017; Hovorka, 2018; Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010; Lorimer, 2007, 2010; Main & Chambers, 2014; Whatmore & Thorne, 2000).
[2]Animals are also referred to as ‘non-human animals’ and ‘more-than-human animals’.
[3]I write “win-win” with some hesitancy, as I’m aware that often in sustainability discussions such an outcome is rarely a reality. While my sustainable human-animal relation argument may be criticized as idealist and simplistic, I hope it serves as a starting point for theorizing not only the kinds of relations we want with animals, but also the kinds of relations theywant with us.
[4]This is consistent with Gibson’s criteria that sustainability assessments occur in “open, dynamic, multi-scalar systems” and that “the means and ends are intertwined and the process is open-ended” without an end state to achieve (Gibson, 2006: 172).
[5]One example with promising implications is thebiocultural approach(Gavin et al., 2015), which aims to preserve the biophysical and sociocultural diversity of the socio-ecosystem.
[6]While the example here is sustainability as it relates to conservation, see (Geiger & Hovorka, 2015; Hovorka, 2018a; Risan, 2005) for a perspective on animal agency, performativity, etc. with regards to working and agricultural animals. See also the book: McFarland, S. E., & Hediger, R. (2009). Animals and agency an interdisciplinary exploration. Leiden: Brill.
[7]Whereas, to contrast, their subjectivity refers to their lived experience (ibid).
[8]Elephants are protected by the state.
[9]N.B. In conflict conservation scholarship, the proliferation of win-win rhetoric does not accurately reflect the majority of mitigation strategies and is often misleading, since trade-offs and hard choices are the most common outcomes (Brockington & Duffy, 2010; McShane et al., 2011). In fact, no conservation conflict has ever been truly, lastingly resolved as a win-win, but some have managed to significantly minimise damaging impacts (Dickman, 2010; Redpath et al., 2013). A successful mitigation results in all stakeholders accepting the management outcome and not imposing their interests to the detriment of others, particularly marginalized groups or entities.
[10]Ecofeminismis an ethic of care, which explores “shared oppressions and simultaneous degradation of women and animals to expose their material pairing and broader conceptual dualisms” (Hovorka, 2015: 5).
[11]In this way, wildlife tourism uses the sustainability tool of “triple bottom-line assessment,” by considering the “social,” “ecological,” and “economic” effects in maintaining the sustainability of the business and natural resources it depends upon (Gibson, 2006).
[12]Buckley RC, Castley JG, Pegas FdV, Mossaz AC, Steven R (2012) A Population Accounting Approach to Assess Tourism Contributions to Conservation of IUCN-Redlisted Mammal Species. PLoS ONE 7(9): e44134. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044134
[13]http://blogs.plos.org/thestudentblog/2016/05/20/is-ecotourism-an-effective-conservation-tool/
[14]Ecotourism opportunities can replace more harmful, unsustainable extractive resource use in natural areas such as mining, logging, poaching, etc.
[15]Belicia, Teo & Islam, Md. (2018). Towards a Decommodified Wildlife Tourism: Why Market Environmentalism Is Not Enough for Conservation. Societies. 8. 59. 10.3390/soc8030059.
[16]Orams, M. B. (2000). The economic benefits of whale-watching in Vava’u, The Kingdom of Tonga. Centre for Tourism Research, Massey University at Albany, New Zealand.
[17]Such calls are common amongst conservation and welfare researchers for “cross-disciplinary information-sharing”, “collaborative research”, and a “common language” to facilitate this process—and may constitute a new discipline called “conservation welfare” (Beausoleil et al., 2018:1), similar to compassionate conservation described here.
[18]A phrase borrowed from animal geography. See Wolch, Jennifer, and Jody Emel. 1995. “Guest Editorial on ‘Bringing the Animals Back In’.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13: 632–636.
[19]Justice perspectives typically refer to those who espouse Animal Rights and ethics of care.
[20]For example, The Netherlands has a political party which advocates for animals, with 5 seats in the House of Representatives: https://www.partyfortheanimals.nl
[21]A “beastly place” refers to a lived nonhuman experience whereas an “animal space,” in contrast, is ordered by humans (Lorimer, 2010).
[22]See Appendix 1 for a list of sustainability indicators for wildlife ecotourism.
[23]The study of positive affective states and ‘what gives animals pleasure’ is a major research avenue in animal welfare science which requires more study.
[24]Needless to say, I mean a properly run and accredited wildlife sanctuary which follows animal-first ethics of care.